Story of a Girl
by Seraephina
Summary: Deceit. Betrayal. Love. Shame. Secrets. Abuse. Catharsis. Raven longs for feeling, yearns to be loved and to love herself. But as she stoops to levels she never dreamt of, she questions her own life, and we see just how far she's willing to sink for love.
1. Isolation

_Tick-tock, tick-tock. The striking hours of your death clock. _

It was half-past nine. Two and a half hours until she was free.

Raven bit her lip so hard that a ruby-red drop of blood trickled down her chin. Shouldn't this be over? Her last birthday had been devastating enough—surely no one could hurt her more than they already had. Surely no one could tear her heart into smaller pieces than it was already. Surely she couldn't be any closer to complete, total isolation.

Surely, surely, surely...

She curled into the farthest corner of her room. The lights flickered unevenly as pain clawed its way up her throat, as sharp as thorns and twice as painful. The whirlwind inside of her mind caused a few shaded lamps to sputter. Raven dug her nails into her palm. _Stay calm, _she ordered herself. _You're not weak. You can get through this. Just like you did last year. _

Another lamp fizzled out. Raven concentrated until sweat poured down her cheeks and she could feel the strain of it shaking her limbs. Her lips formed the soundless words that caused her so much pain and power. And then the silent rush of blankness swept everything into a little pile, and then pushed it into oblivion. Nothingness reined again. Just like it always had. _And just how it always should, _Raven berated herself. She couldn't put her only allies in the world through the hell that had been her last birthday.

Control. That was the secret—the only thing that kept her from cracking. Control. Control over everything. Even the façade of control when things were screamingly out of her power helped, at least a little. And now she was back in the seat of power, commanding every thought and every movement and every absence of feeling.

It didn't stop the hot tears from spilling down her cheeks, though. And as warm as the tears were, they didn't—they _couldn't_—thaw her frozen heart.

She stayed in the corner for nearly an hour, staring across her room. She wondered what she was feeling. She had trained herself to be made of ice—but even so, there had always been the familiar, tickling ping at the back of her brain…until now. It had been the ping that went through her when she knew she should be feeling something. Feeling…emotion. It told her about all these things that she couldn't experience herself. It showed her about smiling when there was a joke. Frowning when there was a mistake. And most of all—the most vibrant ping she had ever seen—was the one for the expressions that flashed across Starfire's face as quickly as a comet, glimmering enticingly in the dark velvet sky. Raven envied that. She envied how Starfire found everything so…Easy. She laughed. She frowned. She smiled when Robin kissed the tip of her nose or brushed her arm.

That was another thing Raven could add to her list—the way Starfire and Robin found it so easy to love. She couldn't imagine anything so intimate…Letting someone sit so close to you that your two heartbeats were one. Leaning in to caress someone's lips with your own. Twining your fingers together as you strolled across the room. Letting everyone in the world know that you loved and you _were _loved.

Raven imagined herself sitting in a chair as some faceless lover stared into her eyes, and let her know that she was the one. The one that completed his life. The one that he couldn't live without, whose soul was joined to his in everlasting love. He'd place a careful, chaste kiss upon her brow and tangle his fingers with hers, only it wouldn't be awkward, because this was a dream. And then he swept her away to some vast, remote, frozen tundra, and they'd rule forever and ever…

…actually, forever and never. Raven watched, helpless in her own imagination, as her face blurred. Her dark eyes brightened into a perfect green. Her short, blunt hair lengthened and grew improbably glossy, as well as shining with coppery light. Her chalky skin bronzed and her limbs grew longer, leaner. The faceless lover wasn't faceless anymore—he had short, dark, mussed hair and an intense gaze. There was pain in his eyes and a story in his heart that he couldn't trust anyone with. He murmured soft words to the not-Raven that tumbled together into a torrent of something real-Raven could never, never have. And when they kissed, it was far from chaste. It was the all-consuming love where Raven supposed you never got enough of the one you cared about. And what hurt the most was that they were beautiful together. They had been beautiful before, on their own…But as they joined, a radiant glow spread throughout their bodies until they were made of light—consumed by light, until it glared into Raven's eyes and she couldn't see them, even as her heart ached to. And then suddenly, in a tantalizing sparkle, they were gone. All that remained was a joyful laugh on a breeze that didn't exist, and a single fiery red hair shining in the illusion of sunlight.

It was the lamest fantasy yet, because all it did was make Raven even more jealous of Starfire and Raven as she had been before.

She knew they shared something so deep that she couldn't begin to understand it…And she knew that the acid of their love was burning her up from the inside. She knew the envious flame was smoldering inside of her right now. It made her realize how lonely she was. It made her realize that she longed for warmth beside her, for lips tickling her ear as they whispered softly to her. She suddenly saw how exposed she was.

Didn't standing alone give you strength? Shouldn't it make things _easier? _There was no one you cared for—no one for Slade to torture. The only way you could be hurt was if someone hurt _you. _You had no ties to anything. You could live anywhere, move as quickly as light on water and stay as fleetingly as a firefly's glow.

It should have given her strength. But all Raven felt was isolation.

Her clock chimed softly. Raven checked the smooth arrows. Eleven o' clock. One more hour. One more freaking hour.

And then the door opened.

Raven was on her feet in an instant, instantly feeling the familiar, icy power run through her hands. A black nimbus was already crackling around her fingers when she realized it was just Robin.

She sank back onto her haunches, breathing raggedly. Robin's eyebrows rose, but he sat on her bed anyway. Despite everything, Raven couldn't help but admire his lean muscles, the way he walked lightly on his toes. She saw his sad, tired eyes, and felt a little quiver of regret pass through her. He didn't have to be like this. He could have asked her for help.

Robin looked sideways at the small clock she clutched with white fingers. "I thought you'd be here," he said in that soft-as-ash voice.

Raven tried to smile weakly. "It's that time of year again," she quipped, but the joke was feeble. As feeble as her life.

"You don't have to stay locked up in here, you know. Beast Boy would have been happy to cook a celebratory dinner." Robin patted the bed by his side. Raven hovered by the wall reluctantly for a moment, then joined him on the bare mattress. She had ripped off the blankets during her nightmares a few hours ago and never got around the replacing them.

Raven sighed. "It's…easier. I don't want everyone all jumpy just because of me and my issues. They're nervous enough, with Slade back in town."

His eyes flashed in mild frustration. "We're your _friends,_ Raven. We care about you."

"Yeah, well…" Raven trailed off. She glanced automatically at the smooth clock face. Five after.

Robin noticed the clock. He took it from her unwilling hands and frowned at it. "I thought the prophecy was for last year," he said. Raven's fingers drummed anxiously by her side until he cradled them around the clock again. She couldn't suppress a shiver when he brushed the underside of her wrist for a moment.

"There's no reason not to be careful," she muttered. Her ghostly white legs almost glowed in the twilight of her room.

Robin looked at her. There was pity in his expression when he looked into her indigo eyes—as wild and untamed as the cold, churning sea, and just as easy to succumb to. They were eyes you could drown in. They were ice that could freeze you into submittance. Raven met his gaze for a moment, then dropped it. "Don't feel sorry for me," she said roughly. "Don't you freaking feel sorry for me."

"I don't feel sorry for you," he whispered, but there was sadness in his voice. And before she knew it, his fingers had twined with hers.

Raven jumped, startled. She yanked her hand out his grasp, heart thumping. She was afraid—but afraid of how she had reacted. She hadn't expected the sudden flash of longing. She hadn't expected the desire twisting in her belly.

And she certainly hadn't expected herself to slowly, ever so slowly, trace Robin's jaw with careful fingertips. Raven pushed all of the misgivings aside so that maybe, just this once, she could enjoy herself. But even as she looked into Robin's leavening eyes and felt a shimmer of yearning in her, she knew that sooner or later the guilt would have to come crashing down. It always did.


	2. Kiss

**A Small Little Author's Note; Just realized how freakish that summary sounds, so I changed it. O.o; Anyway. You're reading Chapter Two, obviously, and I apologize for the super-long break. I was, unfortunately, stuck in the Boondocks with no comp. But whatever. Thanks oodles for all the pretty reviews! And no, I don't own Teen Titans, because if I did there would be a **_proper_** ending to the show and Robin would be a lot taller. So...Enjoy!**

**Also...My bold and italics tags have been screwing up. Maybe I'm delusional. Please bear with me. We can't all be sane in this world.**

She sat back down on the bed, facing him. Robin looked at her intently and brushed a stray lock of hair from her face. The simple touch sent tremors of desire running through her body, no matter how she rebelled against them. She wanted to be in _control… _But it seemed that wasn't an option. Raven closed her eyes, fighting against the heat building inside of her. "Starfire?" she whispered. She needed to know.

Robin placed a hand on hers. "I want _you_ " he murmured. And it was enough.

Their lips met hesitantly. Robin pulled her closer, one hand on her waist. Raven's breath caught, but she didn't break the kiss. His lips were warm—it made her realize she had goosebumps on her arms, and not just from the cold. She opened her mouth slightly, and their tongues slid together for a devastating moment. Then she pulled away.

Heat prickled her cheeks, and her heart thumped. She breathed in dizzily as the rush of warmth soared to her head.

She swayed slightly, overcome by the sudden heat inside of her. _Is this how everyone feels? _she wondered. No wonder she had felt so alone. There was no amount of meditating that could equal such a rush of power. Raven felt the corners of her lips lift, just a little bit, and Robin kissed her smiling mouth. Her temperature skyrocketed. She leaned into Robin's embrace, and as she slid her hands across his back, his breath hitched. It didn't matter that he could run a mile in four minutes and never break a sweat. Something…something made his breathing deeper, and something made his pulse soar upwards. With a thrill, Raven realized that _she_ was doing this.

She told him not to go any further than cradling her waist that night. He listened…And somehow managed to slip her hands between his thighs. They both tried to hide how good it felt. They both saw through the frail disguise. But when she protested about Starfire again, he'd kissed her quiet.

And then he was gone, as silently as he came, as lithe and lean as a panther. Raven could barely believe it had happened…And that it had happened to _her. _

It wasn't perfect, though. No matter how flushed she was, there was a niggling doubt in the back of her mind. _But it feels so good _she argued to herself. _It feels…right. It has to be right._

There was nothing right about it.

A small bell chimed in the back of her head, but Raven ignored it as she sprawled across her still-unmade bed. Her heart pounded. The familiar iciness was gone from her mind—she was glowing with acceptance and…and _feeling. _This as why Starfire was so much stronger than she was. _This _was why Raven had always found it nearly impossible to work with others. Normal people pulsed with feeling and it leaked out of their very pores because it was so strong.

Raven was simply a sculpture, carved from cold, hard, unfeeling ice, set up in the sky to watch with envy at the people frolicking below. And it sucked.

She forced herself to move her leaden muscles and pick up the clock. And when she glanced at the clock, all of the warmth faded away.

It was two o' clock in the morning.

She shuddered and dropped the clock. And even when she tried not to, she couldn't help but wonder…How could she have let Robin kiss her for three freaking hours? Raven pulled a discarded blanket around her shoulders and tried to sleep. But as the relief of her freedom washed over her, she couldn't stop the guilt from eating away at her insides.

Oh, Starfire was going to be so pissed.


	3. Envy

"Friends! The day of shopping has arrived!"

Raven looked up from her book and sighed inwardly. Wonderful. A whole day, devoted to the pure hell that was Jump City's shopping mall. A whole freaking day filled with miniskirts, platform boots and mustard.

Starfire skittered into the living room, glowing with happiness. "Friend Raven! You must certainly accompany us on our monthly spree of purchasing clothing goods!" She grabbed Raven's hands and tugged her into the air, beaming from ear to ear. Raven scowled and snatched her hands back, trying to ignore the emotions that flitted across Starfire's face: confusion, then a small amount of regret, before rapidly settling back into joy. She gave Raven a considering gaze with those soul-searching green eyes, then shrugged and flitted off to find someone else to celebrate with. Confusion. Regret. Indifference. Joy.

Raven longed for those emotions—the ones she only got when kissing Robin, and even then they were muted from the waves of heat crashing down upon her. It was poetic, really. The girl that was sent into the world merely for the purpose of destroying it miraculously survives. The price was to forgo every emotion…Become numb to feeling, else go quietly insane from guilt. And then the girl becomes a parasite, latching onto someone else's boyfriend, just to suck up every ounce of pleasure she could. Raven wondered if everyone felt like there was a monster living underneath their skin, or if it was just her.

There was a scientific term for such a despicable creature. They were called brood parasites. Birds sometimes lay their eggs in other nests, too callous to even raise their own young. The abandoned chicks grow huge and hungry; leeching every scrap of attention they could from their foster parents, until the day when they finally push their siblings out of the nest. And the parents simply try not to notice that below the family tree there are broken, bleeding bodies of their former children, murdered by some outsider that pushed its way into their midst.

Raven was sickened with herself. And yet in some twisted way, she knew she couldn't stop. She couldn't—she wouldn't—stop stealing Robin away from Starfire. She should. She really, really should. But Raven was a brood parasite herself, and old habits die hard. Right now Starfire was dangling over the edge of the family nest…held up only by the last threads of Raven's morale. God knew how long that would last.

There was a quiet swoosh, and all four feet two inches of bright green skin and purple latex tumbled into the living room, trailed by a six foot one Tamaranian topped with hair that glowed with an inner luster and eyes that sparkled with amusement. Raven twirled a lock of her dull violet hair around her finger self-consciously.

"Dudes!" Beast Boy cried jubilantly. "Let's get to the mall!" Cyborg stumbled in after him, yawning. His one remaining eye was dazed with tiredness.

"How are you, Cyborg?" Raven asked, attempting a bit of friendliness. Cyborg shot her a look of suspicion, and she automatically hid herself in her book again. They knew about her and Robin. They absolutely knew.

"I totally kicked Cy's butt in _Marshmallow Blobs of Doom _last night!" Beast Boy was oblivious to Raven's paranoia. Of course, seeing as he had never really graduated past the IQ level of a fifth grader. Beast Boy swelled out his narrow chest and strolled grandly around the room, chattering about every imploded mallow he'd been responsible for during his nightly video-game fest. Envy clutched at Raven's heart. He took such pride in silly things.

It suddenly struck her how totally and completely self-absorbed she was being. Who was she, anyway? Was she just a jealous little girl, filled with empty envy over things she could never possess? She had always felt an inward scorn for people that made themselves miserable, simply to draw attention to themselves. And yet here she was, being a hypocrite again.

No. She would stop feeling envy at everything around her. No matter what it took. Even if she had to change her entire personality. Even if no one noticed.

Raven gradually became aware that there was silence in the room. She shook her head to clear the tangled thoughts and peered out from behind her book. Starfire was staring at her expectantly. Beast Boy was tapping his shiny Pleather foot impatiently, and Cyborg had dozed off with his metallic head on top of the toaster. Shit. They totally knew. They were waiting for her confession.

"Did I…miss something?" Please, please, please, don't figure it out, please oh please oh please—

Starfire smiled radiantly. "We were simply awaiting your agreement to our expedition, friend Raven!"

Thank you, God. "Right. Is Robin coming?" Shit. She had been trying to make them forget about Robin. She had never cared about him before. Would they be suspicious? They would totally be suspicious. Shit. Now they'd absolutely know.

"I'm right behind you," a soft voice said. Raven twisted around so quickly that her neck cricked. She felt a rush of warmth run through her as she saw the boy's dark, mussed hair, glanced over his lean body. He was there. He was real.

He then breezed past her and took Starfire by the waist. The warmth turned to ice in her veins, freezing her into stillness. "Is everyone ready?" Robin glanced around the room as Starfire nuzzled against his shoulder. Raven felt a shiver run through her as his lead eyes glanced over her. "Okay. Beast Boy, wake Cyborg up. He's the only one that can drive the T Car."

--

Raven flicked through a pile of jeans dourly. She held up a jeweled belt to her leotard; glanced in a mirror. It looked ridiculous. Perhaps some people were made for finery—the natural peacocks of the world. Famous actors and movie stars. Or Starfire. Raven was…a raven. Obviously. A nondescript, fade-into-the-distance, lackluster kind of bird. She dropped the belt back on the display table and steeled herself for five and a half more hours of torture.

Starfire was nearly a blur, sprinting in and out of the dressing room; much of the time she was barely half-dressed in skimpy miniskirts and navel-skimming tops. A few salesgirls clustered around the girl, exclaiming over her perfect figure; her fabulously lustrous hair; her phenomenally clear complexion and wonderfully accented eyes. They asked where she had gotten her tan done and who on _Earth_ (Starfire giggled at this point) had designed her boots? They offered her chances at being one of their clothing models and maybe—here the salesgirls lowered their voices conspiratorially—a shot at being on the cover of _Glitter_ magazine.

No envy, Raven. No envy.

Envy was as natural to her as breathing.

She jumped as breath tickled her ear. Robin stood behind her, a lascivious look in his dark eyes. "Come on," he whispered. Raven took a step. Looked back at Starfire's retreating back. Bit her lip. Waged a small war with both her morals and hormones. Was she really going to risk being caught by Starfire, making out with her boyfriend? Had she really sunk that low?

Raven succumbed to the warmth she longer for, the warmth she only got when Robin touched her. They walked together until they found a small cranny, sandwiched between a nearly-deserted hot dog stand and a ferret-supply store proclaiming a huge blowout sale in the impending doom of closure. It was practically empty.

Robin looked her straight in the eyes, and they were all she could see as he slowly, slowly slid his hand up her thigh.

**Ooh. How naughty. :P**


	4. Lies

The next days were a blur. Every time Robin saw her, he somehow managed to touch her or tickle her or tease her. Raven's thoughts were muddled—she hadn't meditated in a week. All she thought of was Robin. In a moment of clarity, she realized that somehow he had sucked her into a trap with his eyes, and then his teeth caught her neck and drained her soul dry.

But then Starfire glided in, and all Raven could do was pretend she was reading.

"Friend Raven?" _Leave me alone, _Raven thought. _If I ignore your __very __existence, will you leave me alone?_

"Friend Raven, you do not look well." Starfire peered into her eyes. "Your face is pale and you're trembling like a Fluggthron before it is beheaded and then baked to a crisp in an oven!"

The question was begging to be asked. "What the hell is a Fluggthron, Star?"

"A Fluggthron is a large, flabby creature with nineteen eyes, and it oozes green slime out of its ears. We eat them on special occasions. They are very difficult to catch, because the slime makes them very slippery." Starfire looked pleased to have made such an accurate description.

It took a while for Raven to get her head around that. "Are you calling me fat and slimy and saying that I ooze pus out of my ears?" She looked at the girl, puzzled. Had Starfire found out about her and Robin? Was this her revenge? Damn it. Maybe that was why Cyborg and Beast Boy had been missing all day—they must be plotting a scheme to torture her at this very second. Damn, damn, damn.

There was horror in Starfire's huge green eyes. "Of course not, friend Raven! I only meant that you look ill. Perhaps you should go to your room of sleeping to rest?"

Raven glanced up into those green eyes. They showed no malice or poisoned sweetness. There was only…concern. And happiness too, because it never glimmered too far from the surface with Starfire. Raven gave a small nod and forced a smile onto her lips. "Of course. Right. Thanks for your concern." Was this how it was always going to be? Was every gesture of kindness just going to make her feel worse?

She hurried down the hall, book forgotten on the couch. _Don't talk anymore, Star, _Raven prayed. _Don't be nice to me._ Raven fought the prickling behind her eyes.

"I could perform Tamaranian Acupressure upon you!" Starfire peered down the hall hopefully.

"No thanks, Star." Her voice cracked on the last syllable and there were suddenly hot tears dripping off the point of her chin. Raven bolted into her room and flung herself onto the bed. _Please don't follow me. P__lease, Star.__ Just go away._ There was no way she could deal with more guilt. It was already churning in her stomach; a sick wave of heat that made her cheeks flush even as she shivered.

"Raven?" Starfire knocked on Raven's door, and the empty sound echoed through the entire room. "Raven, I assure you that I am very capable of performing Tamaranian Acupressure!"

_No. Go away. Go away._ "I—I'm not feeling that great, Starfire. Maybe later." _Please for the love of all that is good and holy, don't—_

Her doors slid open. Starfire looked at her for a moment—curled protectively around a pillow on her bed—and rushed to gather Raven in her long brown arms. She hugged Raven comfortingly, and all Raven could do was cry into Starfire's shoulder. "What is it that troubles you, my friend?"

_I can't tell you. I can never, ever tell you, because you would never be nice to me again.__Because you'd never call me 'friend' again.__Because everyone would say my name with a mixture of sadness and disgust, and then they'd run to you and comfort you and I'd be alone again. _"Maybe I caught a virus or something," she managed.

Starfire looked deep into Raven's red-rimmed eyes. "Perhaps it goes deeper than that, Raven. Have you sad feelings for your family? Are you with the sick-home feeling?"

Raven wanted to shove Starfire away and tell her to go use her sympathy on someone that actually deserved it. She wanted to look into Star's huge green eyes and tell her everything that was going on, and then wait for the storm of fury to crash over her. All she was—the only thing that she was—was a stupid, cheating brood parasite not worthy of any kindness at all.

Instead she huddled to Starfire's warm body and shivered like a child without blankets. "No, it's just a virus. But thanks anyway, Star."

Maybe she should tell Starfire now. Maybe she should just open her mouth and open the floodgates, let the whole story pour out until there was nothing left to say. Maybe Starfire would even understand. She would tell Starfire everything—_everything. _Raven would tell her about never feeling accepted and always wondering how it felt to be a real person; a person with emotions and friends and a _real_ boyfriend, not just someone else's guy that she hooked up with when no one was looking.

"The thing is, Starfire…I've been—"

And then Robin himself stepped into the room.

Starfire leapt up, face pink with pleasure. "Robin! How kind of you to join us!" She rushed over to the boy and enveloped him in a hug. Raven developed a sudden, extreme interest in her fingernails and didn't look up until the embrace had ended.

"Raven was afflicted with a sickness of virus," Starfire was informing Robin studiously. He looked at her consideringly, and Raven had to look down to avoid grinning stupidly in his presence. _Shit. Why does he always make me feel like an idiot? _And yet she couldn't say the feeling was irritating; in fact, she realized that she kind of liked it.

Robin looked at Starfire meaningfully. "Can I take it from here, Star?"

Poor girl. She was just as much underneath Robin's spell as Raven herself was. Starfire hurried out of the room, but not before giving Raven a wide, reassuring smile. The sick feeling in her stomach got worse.

Robin sat down on her bed. "You okay?" he asked. There was real concern in his voice, and Raven melted. She could never give him up. No matter how guilty she got, she could never give up the one person in the worlds that loved her. It would be throwing away the only thing that had ever bothered to look beneath her questionable exterior. The only person besides Starfire, of course, but Starfire liked everyone. And Raven wasn't exactly into girls anyway.

Raven gave him a wan smile. "Better now that you're here," she said, hoping that maybe she sounded flirty or cute or like someone pretty.

Robin laughed and was about to say something when there was a small beep. He frowned slightly and held up a finger to stop her from saying anything. He took a sleek cell phone from the belt around his waist—funny how she'd never noticed it before. Robin opened the phone deftly. "Hey," he said, and Raven looked at him, questions burning her lips in an effort to be spoken. Who was he talking to? Why couldn't he just use his communicator?

"Yeah, yeah. You'll get them soon." He glanced at her with the barest twitch of his eyes. She wouldn't even have noticed it if she hadn't been focused on his face.

"Uh-huh. I understand." Robin snapped the phone shut and slid onto her bed again, untroubled as a summer sky.

"Who was that?" Raven started. "Why didn't you just use your communicator?"

Robin looked deep into her eyes and smiled softly. "The mechanics need some special parts to fix my bike, and I'm bringing them to the shop." Then he kissed her, slow and intense, and she forgot about how the words had come too quickly to his lips. Robin would never lie—Robin loved her. She ignored the guilt and fear crashing into her. All she wanted was for the kiss to never, never end.

Raven felt the sick feeling in her stomach move up her throat. She broke away from Robin, tears welling in her eyes, and she sprinted to the bathroom. She barely made it before the bile churned in her stomach. Then she threw up.

Shame boiled beneath her skin at puking in front of Robin, but when she looked up shakily all he looked was worried for her. He crossed the room with long strides and pressed her face to his chest. Raven breathed in the familiar smell of sweat and vinyl and something exciting—and the nausea faded. He cradled her face in his hands. "Are you okay?"

Raven nodded. "Yeah," she said, and for the moment she was. "I'm okay."

He looked like he wanted to say something, but then the phone beeped again. Raven forced a smile. "Go on," she said, willing herself to sound supportive. "Go patch things up with the mechanics."

Robin smiled, relieved. "You rock, Raven," he said. And then he was gone before the words had finished echoing around the room.

A minute later, the familiar roar of his bike started up, and Raven crossed unsteadily to the window to watch Robin speed effortlessly down the road.

It only occurred to her when she was about to fall asleep that his bike was supposed to be at the mechanics.


	5. Secrets

**Hey, guys! I know some of you are getting a little bit impatient, but I SWEAR this is going somewhere. This chapter's sort of a prelude to the drama, but I have super big plans for the upcoming chapters…(mysterious smile) ****Lots of crazy stuff is gonna happen, as well as some darkness and angst and other wonderful crap like that.**** So…read…and review…I do love my reviews. Thanks for bearing with me, guys!**

The sides of Raven's mind were waging a war, and the smoke was too thick to see who was winning. She knew she should tell Starfire about everything going on—how Robin would sneak into her room at night; how the hours would blur together as their bodies moved like one; about all of the sweet nothings Robin whispered into her ear until she had to kiss him to make him quiet—and yet she couldn't. Raven clung to every moment; she kept them close to her when she felt miserable and reveled in them during the happier times. It had been three months—three whole months!—since Robin had first kissed her. Battles had been fought, leaves had slowly spiraled to the ground in giddy whirls, and Raven was becoming someone that she didn't understand. More and more quickly, she seemed to change. She didn't know herself now. Suddenly, the Raven she used to be was fading away like an old photograph and some new girl—someone sneaky and lusty and altogether despicable—was taking her place.

Raven had murmured her deepest secrets to him as they lay there in the dark of her room, still panting, and his responses were perfect in every way possible.

_"Oh my God, Raven. Are you okay?"_

_"It's okay. L__et it out, Rave. Let it all out—I swear you'll feel better.__"_

_"I'm here for you. You can tell me anything. Anything__ in the world__ you want__ to tell me, I'll listen__…"_

One time the team had been chasing Dr. Light through the city. Raven's mind was clear, and every nerve in her body was tuned towards her powers. For the first time in weeks, she felt…clean. Cleansed of everything that had made her impure; all of the secrets and lies and stolen kisses had been washed away. They had almost caught up to him when Dr. Light vanished in a blinding starburst.

"Down there!" Robin had shouted as soon as they could see again, gesturing towards a gaping hole in the ground. There were orange cones lining the rim of the chasm and cold, still construction equipment nearby. Starfire immediately dove into the darkness, Beast Boy and Cyborg following. Raven had turned to trail them until she felt Robin's touch on her arm.

"Come on," he whispered, a secretive smile playing about his lips.

She remembered that she turned to him, confused. "But Dr. Light—" she started. Robin shook his head quickly, pulling more insistently at her arm.

"The others can get him. Now _come on._"

Raven followed him for a moment, then stopped. "What about everyone else? You mean they're chasing their shadows?" She bit her lip. What was Robin up to?

He looked angry for a moment. "I thought you'd understand, Raven. Can't you see what I'm trying to do? Can't you see what I'm doing for you?"

She backed away slowly, fear clutching her heart in an icy fist. "No, I don't, Robin! I don't have any freaking idea what you're trying to do!" What was _wrong_ with him today? Why were his eyes glazed? Why was there sweat beading on his forehead, and why was he suddenly so _angry?_

Robin had stepped close to her and held her face gently. "I thought we needed a little time together," he said, sounding like the perfect fairytale boyfriend again, like the anger had never existed. "Alone."

_No. No way. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to sneak around like some Goddamn weasel in the city with Robin. I can say no. He'll understand. I know he will._

She bit her lip, waging the worst battle yet in her mind. He had seen her indecision. "I did it for you," Robin had said, his voice louder than normal, his eyes anguished in his slim face. "I did it because you're the only one that understands me, Rave. You're the only one that really knows about my parents. I did it because…I love you."

_Oh my God, did he just say he loved me? I think he did. I totally think he did._

Raven had stopped breathing for a moment. _He's playing on your weaknesses, Raven.__ He's using everything you've told him.__ There's something wrong with him, and you can see it!_ Her sensible side—the one that was slowly dwindling to nothing—was protesting against every kiss that came to rest on her lips. She knew if she looked up into his eyes again, there was no way she could resist him. The softer part of her brain was melting, and the sheer perfectness of the moment overrode any suspicions she had. He kissed her again, and she looked up through her lashes.

His eyes had been tragically dark—they pleaded for her. He wanted her. No matter about the sudden flashes of anger or the red-rimmed eyes. He. Wanted. _Her._

"Now come on," Robin had said, more insistently, and he guided her down a dark, narrow alley. They stayed there, curled between two buildings, more clothing off than on, and Raven had been in such bliss that she didn't notice the unrelenting beeping of Robin's cell phone.

When everyone got back to the tower, Beast Boy had been furious. "Where WERE you guys?!" His eyes flashed angrily. Cyborg had silently crossed his arms and looked down at them from his six-foot-something height. Starfire simply looked puzzled, in her sweet way.

"I thought I saw Control Freak," Robin lied smoothly. "Raven came and helped me check everything over, but I guess it was just a mistake." His pose told one thing—my bad, guys, I'm sorry for bailing—but his reddened eyes glared daggers at Beast Boy. Beast Boy looked at Robin searchingly, but he withdrew to the living room. Starfire hadn't noticed anything strange.

"Well, if you are certain it was simply a trick of the eyes, then all is forgiven," she said happily. "Come, let us partake in our evening meal, friends!" She looked around. "Raven?"

Raven had had to turn away from all of the sincerity. She slipped away to her room and lay there in the darkened space, burning all over with tears that wouldn't come and heaving with deep, soundless sobs.

----------------------

It was Starfire's birthday. Beast Boy bought vegan ice cream and made a huge cake in the shape of Tamaran. Cyborg clumsily hung streamers from the walls and blew up hundreds of balloons. They all saw Robin sneak into Starfire's room, and they all heard her giggling inside. Raven had to squeeze her nails into her palm to keep from screaming at the thought of Robin kissing Starfire, his _real_ girlfriend.

When they finally emerged, Robin's lips were kiss-reddened and Starfire was blushing furiously. They looked beautiful together. They completed each other. Starfire had slipped into one of her Tamaranian dresses—it was all sleek lines and gorgeous lavender material. Robin whispered into her ear and she gave a tinkling laugh. _Damnit._

Raven could barely stand to look at them. They looked so…perfect. They looked happy together. They didn't sneak into each other's rooms at night so that no one could see them; they could kiss in public and all anyone would think would be, "Look how cute they are together!" or "God, I wish I was that girl." Raven knew she should go wish Starfire a happy birthday. She knew it. But the thought of looking straight into the eyes of the girl whose life she was ruining was unthinkable. She couldn't do it.

Starfire twirled happily around the living room. "You are heartily thanked, friends!" she cried, a huge smile on her face. Cyborg picked up a small, brightly wrapped present that looked comical in his huge hands. "Happy birthday, Star," he said, a jack-o-lantern smile on his face. Starfire looked joyful as she tore open the wrapping paper.

"On my planet, it is more traditional to grant one a Pluffdron egg on their days of birth," she said as shreds of paper flew everywhere, and no one bothered to ask what the hell a Pluffdron egg was. "Oh!" she exclaimed, and held up a dainty pair of silver earrings.

"I thank you, Cyborg!" Starfire cried joyfully, and threw her arms around his massive bulk. Beast Boy held up a big box covered sloppily in newspaper and duct tape. Starfire busily tore it open as Raven crept closer and closer to the hallway, praying that no one would notice her existence. As soon as everyone was occupied in watching Starfire try on a hideous cardigan that Beast Boy had apparently knitted himself, Raven slunk out of the room.

The stairs leading to the open roof were cold, and frost crackled underfoot when Raven emerged at the top. She closed the trapdoor slowly and looked around.

Jump City was beautiful at night—the boring gray buildings were misted over with frost and crazy-bright lights twinkled everywhere. Raven rested her forearms on the safety banister and tried to drown herself in the beauty. White clouds plumed out from her mouth when she breathed and the cold air felt like razors against her skin, but she knew she couldn't go back inside. She could never, never go back to all of the sincerity and love that was pouring out of her team members.

For the first time, Raven wondered if she should go back to Azarath. It wasn't like she was doing any good here. Maybe if she removed herself from the temptation of Robin, everyone would eventually forget about her, and Starfire would be safe from the insatiable greed that was her so-called friend Raven…

The trap door opened behind her, and Raven spun around. It was only Robin.

_Only_ Robin. He wasn't _only_ Robin, he was the one thing in the world that loved her. The only love she had ever known in her life. No, he wasn't _only…_he was _everything._

He walked softly up to her and rested a hand on her shoulder. It sent shivers down her back—although that might have been just from the cold—and Raven smiled a little. "You want to come back inside?" he asked her. "It's kind of cold out here."

Raven shrugged and was silent for a moment. "I didn't want to stay there," she muttered, avoiding his eyes. She turned out to look across the city again, but it seemed like Robin's eyes had sucked all of the twinkling lights away. Raven turned back to him, suddenly a little dizzy.

He took her hand and led her back into the tower. "I have a surprise for you," he whispered, and Raven felt a little shimmer pass through the dizziness.

Without knowing how they got there, Raven realized they were standing in Robin's bedroom. It was dark and sparsely furnished—there was a stack of computer parts in one corner and a huge screen on the opposite wall. Robin spun her around and kissed her—it was almost rough, almost violent. Raven kissed back for a moment, and then the dizziness took over again.

Robin looked at her questioningly, and she shook her head, fighting the wobbliness. Without another word, they were kissing again.

Suddenly Raven realized that Robin was pushing the straps of her leotard down, and she broke away from him. "It's Starfire's birthday," she said without knowing why.

"I know."

"This isn't right, Robin."

"I know that too."

She looked at him—stared deep into his red-rimmed eyes—and wondered how long she'd be able to resist. He traced a finger up her jaw, and she knew it wouldn't be much longer.

Robin kissed her stronger now, and she shuddered a little. She broke away one more time, and he was startlingly angry.

"I love you," he said, but the words sounded sharp.

Raven said, "I know," but he didn't smile. He stared her down a little, and she felt little tremors of fear run through her. Why was she afraid? It was Robin. He loved her. He wouldn't hurt her.

"I love you. And you love me, right?" The words came quicker now. Robin's eyes were over-bright and there was a little bead of sweat running down his forehead. Raven felt fear clog her throat.

"You love me, _right?" _

She nodded. It was true, wasn't it? It was true. She did love him.

"When you love someone," Robin said slowly, walking around her in a dizzying circle, "you have to make sacrifices sometimes. And sometimes you agree on things, too. Sometimes you have to make compromises. You have to know when to give in. You have to pick your battles, Raven. It's all a part of love. It's all in the name of love." Raven felt tears behind her eyes, but she was too confused to let them out.

He kissed her again, and suddenly she understood the roughness of it. She knew what he wanted, and she knew that she would let him have it. All of it.

Robin smiled at her as he slowly leaned her back onto his bed, and Raven tried to tell herself that it was all in the name of love.


	6. Abuse

**A Small Little Author's Note: ****OMGAH, I am **_**so**_** sorry about the super long wait, everyone! It's been a crazy, crazy week—let's just leave it at that, shall we? No need to go into unpleasant details. C:**** So anyway, I wrote a longer chapter than I usually do, just to make up for my temporary dead-ness. Things are starting to ramp up a little…**

**Dallas,**** I believe you will know the part I dedicated to you when you see it. And if you don't…Well, you will. For everyone else, thanks so much for sticking through with me! I know I'm a little long-winded and over dramatic, but that's okay.****Thanks so much for the reviews, guys! They make me so happy! (gives everyone hugs) Enjoy!**

It was gone. All gone. Done. Given away, never to come back. She had given it all away to Robin—given him everything she had, let him in without a second thought. It was just like in movies, where suddenly the gorgeous hero realizes that despite his former love for one girl, now that he's realized just how much the other one's worth, he chooses her and leaves the first in the dust.

Only it never happened like that in movies, because the hero never chose the girl he was cheating with.

Raven curled up on her bed, racked with some emotion so huge that the tears couldn't even rightfully fall onto her pillow. Her entire body burned with guilt and shame and a terrible, terrible hatred for herself. She loathed herself for being half-demon—for being a _half-breed._ She loathed herself for not being good enough to be the _real_ girlfriend. But most of all…the thing that made Raven want to rip at her clothes and gouge scars into her flesh, just to punish herself for being so _despicable_…was that she had gone all the way with Robin and felt disgusted, where Starfire had only kissed him and felt delighted.

She tried to find her center—_Azarath, Metrion, Zintho__s__…Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos__—_and tried to find the quiet place inside of her chest that had always been there, stretching out its frail arms to shield her from everything. But as she searched harder and harder to find the silent solace of meditation—_Azarath, Metrion…Azarath…Azarath Metrion Zin…Oh, God, where are you?—_ she slowly came to realize that it was gone. As soon as she had given herself to Robin, let him climb inside of her to hide from all of the shame, her powers had just…vanished. She was nothing. She was a pathetic excuse for the lowest, dirtiest creature that dared to creep through the muck of the earth.

_How can something that's supposed to make you feel so full make you feel so empty?_

_How can someone that loves you take away the tiny amount that you still possess? _

_If Robin really loved me, wouldn't he give up Starfire just to be with me?_

_What the hell is wrong with me?_

_What the hell is wrong with the world?_

Raven wanted to punish herself for the unfaithful thoughts—of course Robin loved her…Didn't he? He hadn't known what would happen to her…of course not! He had made his decision out of love…right? He had been giving her a gift! The best gift in the whole world.

The small, rational part of her brain was slowly, slowly withering, and Raven clung to the lies with every ounce of her being. She sank beneath the blankets, feeling very fragile, and slowly swallowed all of her fear—all of her misgivings. Outside her window, the light of morning was slowly stealing away the blankness of night. Her muscles felt sore; it felt like sandpaper had been rubbed into her eyes. As she squeezed her eyes shut, she saw scenes from her past, flickering in and out—

_…sitting on the ledge outside of her window, singing a soft lullaby to herself as she slowly ripped a dainty white flower into tiny shreds…_

_…standing before the mirror and glaring into her own p__ale face and dark, demonic eyes; __screaming in fury at the curse of being a half breed—smashing a fist into the glass, clo__sing her eyes against the shards __and then cradling her bleeding hand in horror…_

_…looking up at her father's ecstatic, exhilarated face as he shattered a farmhouse down on the strange planet called Earth, feeling sickened as she saw flames licking up the sides of the wooden frame__ and watching the people slowly, slowly die__…_

_…struggling to control her__ powers, __struggling for calm and quiet and control__; and then she lost it, she lost it all and suddenly there were people screaming and screaming and screaming and she kne__lt to the ground, terrified of w__hat she could do__ and terrified of the hell she could wreak upon the world..._

_…cradling Robin's face in her hands as she kiss__ed him with overwhelming passion before they sank back onto her bed and tore at each other's clothes in a starving frenzy…_

"He loves me," Raven murmured to herself as she huddled beneath the covers, trembling at the force of the memories. And then she soothed her mind with lies as she sank into an uneasy sleep.

----------------

Days passed—Raven started feeling sick all the time. Robin's eyes were mostly rimmed with red when she saw him; his skin started to look chalky, his mouth a gaping hole in his face. Constant stress and self-loathing wasn't making Raven a beauty pageant contestant, either. She knew Cyborg and Beast Boy could tell something was wrong, and Starfire wasn't nearly as featherbrained as she sounded. Her own thoughts were muddled a lot of the time; good actions blended with bad and the line between them was slowly blurring into nothing. Raven walked around in a dream—a nightmare. A nightmare where life was like a poisonous sweet or a honeycomb with a buried twist of metal, where pleasure mingled with pain and nothing was exactly as it seemed.

-----------------

"Hey, Raven!" Beast Boy was sprawled on the couch, reading a magazine. He looked up cheerfully when she drifted into the kitchen, hoping maybe for some tea and minimal contact with…well, everyone. Raven knew that if she saw Robin, she'd have to kill herself. Seriously.

She looked up warily, steam hissing out of the kettle as she poured it into her mug. "Do you need help with something?" she asked cautiously, voice carefully neutral. If she could just finish making her tea and help with whatever idiotic chore he needed, then she could probably skip lunch and hide in her room until dinner. Minimal contact. Minimal churning, sickening guilt. She could deal with hunger if it meant avoiding puking her guts up from shame.

Beast Boy grinned up at her and waved his book. "Found this in Starfire's room," he said. "It's called _Nine Hundred and Forty Seven Point Three Things You Didn't Know About the Planet We Call Earth._ Did you know that rats have sex up to twenty times a day?"

Raven resisted the strong desire to ask him what his own sexual-intercourse-per-day ratio was and tried to swallow the sickness. "Could you please not talk about sex in front of me?" she asked, feeling a roiling pit of self-hatred in her belly. "I'd really like to avoid throwing up everything I've eaten today."

He squinted at her and stood up. "But you _haven't _eaten anything today," he said, and his look was concerned. "Raven, are you okay? You've been all weird lately. Robin too. Dude, he looks like he's on drugs!" Beast Boy put his magazine down and looked right at her. "You haven't been eating breakfast, you almost always skip lunch, and dude! You barely eat anything at dinner! Star says you keep throwing up." He stopped for a second as a thought struck him with such force that he sat back down with a thump.

"Oh my God. You're pregnant."

She threw the mug of tea at him and heard the ceramic shatter, felt the vibrations of Beast Boy's shouts as she sprinted down the hall. There wasn't enough air. Her lungs were squeezing together painfully and her head was spinning and spinning and spinning and she was going to suffocate, right here and now and she'd be gone from the world and…

Raven burst through the trapdoor to the roof and sucked in the cold, smoke-tainted air. The dizziness cleared from her head. She stood there for a moment, icy air cutting straight through her cloak, and then slowly moved towards the railing. Tiny flakes of snow were spiraling down, and they landed on her cheeks with a soft, cold caress. She breathed in…breathed out. Calmed her heart. Chanted her meditation words in a faint attempt to bring the crackling black nimbus of power to her palms. Knew it wouldn't work.

It didn't.

It was a shock to hear the words coming out of Beast Boy's mouth. Even with all of her tangled thoughts about sleeping with Robin, even with the hours and hours a day she spent fretting about it, she hadn't even thought about being pregnant. _Oh my God. Oh my God._ It couldn't be true. Things like that didn't happen to people she knew. They happened to other people. You heard about it in magazines. On television. In books. But not to her.

Raven thought about the other part, the part that took her breath away with a nasty thump. _Robin too. Dude, he looks like he's on drugs!_

No. Things like that didn't happen. They just…didn't.

-----------------

Robin came into her room that night, and she leapt off of her bed, feeling a dull sort of pleasure at his appearance. The lights were dimmed, but she could see his silhouette in the glare from the hallway. "Robin," she said, a small twinge of some emotion cutting through the bleariness.

He stumbled into her room, footsteps heavy on the metal floor. Raven caught her breath sharply, and if her powers had still been hers she knew the lights would have flickered.

"Oh my God," she breathed, and knelt down to the floor next to him. His eyes looked insane—dark, bottomless voids in his sweating face. His fingers twitched. Somehow his mouth seemed ringed with ash, standing out ominously from his whitish skin. The contrast between his burning flesh and Raven's cold hands was terrible. "Robin," she said, shaking his shoulders. His head rolled in her direction, and she wondered for a panicked moment if he had passed out. Her breath was short and spots swirled around her vision. "Oh my God, Robin!"

Slowly, the dark, charred mouth opened. "I'm okay," he mumbled. Raven felt hot tears slide down her cheeks.

"Robin, oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you?" She felt his hands, clutched at the rumpled front of his shirt. Strange—the material hung loose on him, when days before she could have sworn it was bulging with random new muscles Robin had suddenly acquired. Raven felt her breath coming faster, and her sight went all crazy-bright with stars.

He shook her hands off of him, suddenly angry. "There's nothing wrong with me!" he slurred, swaying to his full height. Raven looked up at him from the floor. "Jesus, Robin, we have to get you to the hospital!" She staggered upright. "Look at you. You look like crap." A thought struck her like a punch in the gut. "Oh my God, were you drugged? Did someone put something in your food?"

The eyes flashed with a terrible anger. "I said I'm okay!"

She couldn't stop. The panic overwhelmed her. It crushed her in its grasp. "Robin, oh my G—"

She felt the blow land on her jaw, launching her backwards into the wall. Raven's spine screamed in pain when it connected with the triangular bookshelf, and there was something hot trickling down her cheeks. Stars sparkled in her vision and she cried out in pain, arms coming up automatically to shield herself from her attacker.

Her attacker. That was Robin.

No.

No, it couldn't be.

It couldn't be him.

He stumbled back from her, eyes fearful but still livid. "I told you I was okay!" he shouted, and lurched out of the room. The doors whooshed shut behind him with a jarringly quiet sound. She could hear him staggering down the hall, and pictured his terrifying face.

Raven cowered there in the wreckage of her bookshelf, and the blood of her temple eventually slowed to dripping down her cheek. But as it mixed with her tears and turned pink rather than red, and she struggled for air with lungs so tight that she could barely breathe, she wondered if anyone was really okay in the strange, strange world called Earth.


	7. Confession

**A Bit of an Author's Note: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for the super-sweet reviews, everyone!!! I feel _so_ loved right now. Thank you oodles and oodles for taking time to read all my crap. This chapter's for you guys.**

**...Also...I'm getting severely bored with all this, "Oh, poor me, I'm no good at anything, I'm a complete failure at life!" crap, so I'm planning on some happier notes to enter this story. Can't tell you everything, though, so you'll just have to hang on and enjoy the ride. Mwah! (blows air kisses everywhere) Enjoy! **

Who the hell was she? She was no one. She was a weak, pathetic excuse for a person. Maybe she used to be someone, someone at least with a useful talent that she used to do something right every once in a while. But now…the Raven she used to be had blown away like sand in the wind, and some despicable creature had taken her place. She was an empty shell, filled with lust and greed and self-hatred. Empty. Nothing. Nothing worth caring about, anyway.

Suddenly Raven felt like her life was a series of dominoes. As soon as Robin had kissed her for the first time, they had started to ever-so-subtly fall. Now they were crashing down upon her with all the force they could muster, and amidst all the wreckage of her life Raven had no idea how to set them back up again. All she could do was run away from the whole world and hope that nothing would follow.

----------------

_I can't stay here any longer. It's not your fault—this is my choice and my choice alone. I'm sorry I've been such a burden the past months. I'm sorry I don't have the ability to be part of the team any longer. I'm sorry about a lot of things. I'm mostly sorry about things that I can't tell you, but since you can't know about them I'll never get the chance to clear my conscience. But that's okay…It was never clear to begin with, anyway._ Raven scratched out the last couple sentences and scribbled in, _I'm sure you'll find someone with more talent to replace me. Who knows? Maybe they'll be more fun to be around as well._

The noise of her pen scraping across the paper was irritating Raven's frazzled nerves. She stopped for a second, hearing footsteps in the hall; but they passed by her door without pausing. Raven turned back to the sheet of paper. _It's just something I have to do_, she scrawled at the bottom, knowing it wasn't true. The letters were shaky and ill-formed and the ink ran down the paper as tears splashed onto the page. Raven bit back the urge to rip the sheet into tiny, tiny pieces—she couldn't stay here any longer. There was no way she could continue to destroy everything in the world for her team mates. Ex-team mates. She was no more a part of the team than Terra (Although everyone had liked Terra, and no one liked Raven).

Raven swung her backpack onto her shoulder and stuffed the paper into her pocket. It was past midnight—Starfire would be asleep, and Beast Boy and Cyborg were oblivious to anything off of the TV screen. If Robin was out in the city, she could probably be aboard a train and somewhere thousands of miles away before anyone found her note in the kitchen. _One can only hope_, Raven thought grimly, and padded out into the dark hallway.

As she passed the sliver of light underneath Starfire's doorway, Raven had to fight the urge to tell the girl everything. Maybe if Starfire forgave her, then Raven could stay, and if she didn't tell Cyborg or Beast Boy and Robin somehow managed to forget about the half-year they spent secretly lusting after each other, then maybe Raven would gradually forget, too.

The entire idea was bullshit. But Raven was pretty good at coming up with bullshit.

----------------

She steeled herself and taped the note to the refrigerator, lingering a little in the living room. Raven was going to miss this place—the room she had designed especially for herself, the empty rooftop that looked over Jump City's buildings, the big bay windows she meditated by. Used to meditate by. Back when she had powers, anyway.

Oh, God, she was going to miss Robin. Despite the bruise on her cheek and the deep gash on her back, despite the blood underneath her nails and the sick feeling in her stomach that refused to go away, she felt a deep, hungry pull sucking her towards him. He had kissed her. He had lied for her. He had done everything she had and more—he had said he loved her. No one had ever done that for her. And with the way her life was going now, no one ever would.

No matter that her spine ached and she could feel the cut on her temple throbbing with her forehead. No matter the chalky skin and red-ringed eyes. Raven knew something was wrong with the boy, that she was digging her own grave by refusing not to love him—she would love him until the day she died. No matter how he treated her. Disgust with herself mixed with the aching in her heart and Raven wanted so, so badly to never leave this place. But she had to. She had to.

With a last, sad look at the silent Tower, Raven slunk out of the room and sprinted down the stairs, heart thumping its way out of her chest. Robin hadn't bothered to turn on the alarms, Raven noticed. That was strange. The only reason he was in charge of the security systems was because he was paranoid enough to turn them on every night. Maybe he just needed to get back into the Tower without waking anyone up. But why was he out anyway? And why couldn't he just disarm the alarms himself?

She paused by the disabled computer screens for a second and let her heavy bag drop off one shoulder and onto the floor. That was odd—if the log wasn't malfunctioning, then it was saying the alarms hadn't been switched on for months. That couldn't be right.

Raven gave the quiet machine another look and mentally shrugged. It made it easier for her to get out, anyway.

Not that she wanted to leave. As she pushed the back door open, she could feel the urge to slink back inside so badly that her heart felt like it was being ripped in two. The freezing air slapped against her face as the door opened and Raven squinted. Was there someone in front of her, or was it just the snowflakes in the air?

"What are you doing out so late, Raven?"

_Oh, God._

Raven peered into the snowy night. "Robin?" she whispered, heart beating its way out of her rib cage. God, she didn't need this. She couldn't meet him now. She needed to get away.

His voice was too loud for the still night. "What are you doing here, Raven?" She could barely see his silhouette through the flakes of snow. He slouched forward, arms bare in the freezing air. As he neared her, Raven could see the over-bright eyes and flushed skin. She shrank back and held her bag to her chest protectively. How could she feel such love and fear at the same time? Shouldn't it be one or another?

"I was—I was taking a walk," she murmured, hating the feeble lie even as she told it. She longed so badly to enclose herself in his arms that she could almost taste it. Raven worried her lip until it felt raw.

Robin lurched in her general direction. "C'mere," he slurred, and hooked an arm around her waist. He crushed his mouth to hers and she tasted…something sweet—and something burnt, almost ashy.

Raven yanked her body away from his and clutched her bag. "I have to go now, Robin," she said in a strangely calm voice. She felt like she was about to hyperventilate. "Go back inside." _Go,_ she prayed, wanting him to go and never come back so maybe she could get on with her life.

His reddened eyes traveled slowly, slowly from her heavy bag…to her face…to the practical sneakers she'd slipped on in her room. Raven knew she should be running—running far, far away, while his comatose brain struggled to make the connection between it all—but she was fascinated. She saw the gears moving in his brain; she could practically follow the sluggish train of thought in his head. And then suddenly, before she could move, he had thrown her bag to the ground and tackled her. Raven felt his body collide with hers so violently that her jaw rattled and the dim moonlight was blotted out. His arms circled her chest like steel bands.

Raven struggled against the cruel parody of an embrace, suddenly hating the feel of his chest against her back. She jerked her head back and it collided with his jaw. It hurt a hell of a lot more than it did in the movies, but even as she saw stars, the blood dripping out of Robin's nose made it worth it. She exploded upwards and for a blissful second, she was pulling away from him, away from it all…And then his strong, thin fingers wound around her ankle. And then he was straddling her body, bloodied face twisted into a snarl.

"Trying to escape your cage, little bird?" he jeered, and Raven ground her teeth at the pun. She was too pissed off to even answer his question. Robin spat at the ground beside her head and heaved her body up, and then—finally, after everything that had happened before, after everything he had done to her—Raven was afraid.

----------------

He flicked the lights on in the living room and Raven squinted against it, wrists aching where Robin gripped them.

"Starfire! Cyborg! Beast Boy!" Robin's voice was rough, grating against her ears. Beast Boy stumbled out of his room, eyes glazed over with tiredness.

"Robin? Raven? It's like two in the morning, guys…" He dragged his palms across his eyes and squinted. "Robin? Dude, are you bleeding? Why're you holding Raven like that?" Beast Boy's tired brain was struggling with the scene in front of him.

And then Cyborg lumbered in; and when Starfire followed, all hell broke loose.

"Robin! Let go of our friend this instant!" Starfire's voice went shrill with horror and she brought her fists up, crackling with a green nimbus. Robin laughed cruelly.

"There's no need for that, Starfire," he grinned, but his blackened mouth made the expression dull. "This little birdie's going to sing for us, and if I were you I'd listen." He shoved Raven forward and she stumbled. Cyborg bent down to help her up, but as soon as he looked into her eyes he knew. There were secrets shimmering in her eyes. There was treachery, and shame, and lies, all hiding just beneath the surface. He straightened back up, and Raven pulled herself to a standing position all by herself. She was sick with confusion. Sing? What could she possibly sing to him?

Robin looked at her, mocking her with his eyes. "Are you shy, birdie? You don't want to sing for us?" His expression turned sour in an instant. "Then maybe I'll sing for you."

His red-ringed eyes bored into her with an insane delight as he laughed, and suddenly she understood. Raven felt all of the breath leave her body and swiftly and silently as a kick to her belly. She fell to the ground. "Robin," she whispered, pleading with him, willing to do anything and be anyone just so he wouldn't tell. She would do anything—anything at all!—if he would just stop, stop, stop. "Robin," she said desperately, voice catching on the last syllable, but he just laughed again.

He pointed to her with a shaking finger, skin slick with sweat. "Look at her," he said, and the other Titans stared. Cyborg looked like he was about to be sick. "Look at her. Do you know what she's been doing, these past months? Do you know what secrets she's been harboring?" Her soul was screaming inside of her that she couldn't take anymore. She couldn't do this. She would end it all, right here, right now. Despair numbed her senses until she could barely realize she was on the ground, holding herself with frail arms. Starfire looked horrified and bent to touch her comfortingly, but Robin kicked her hand away.

"Do you know what she's done to you, Starfire? She's been cheating, Star. I've been cheating. I've been cheating on you with this piece of filth. I screwed her, she screwed me—it doesn't matter which way you think about it!" Robin's face was filled with a mad joy as Starfire screamed. Raven clutched herself and rocked back and forth, back and forth. Beast Boy made a choking sound and Cyborg's expression was too hard to look at. Somehow, somehow Robin went on, destroying everything in the world, killing her with his words. "Yeah, that's right! That's right, Starfire. You weren't good enough for me. And the funny part is that this poor little girl's been blaming herself for everything!"

Blackness was smothering her. The words pouring out of Robin's mouth; the shredding of her soul; everything; everything in the world was too much. Raven's voice joined Starfire's and it all became one long, teakettle shriek. Robin's voice carried over it all, like the verdict of some higher power on Judgment Day. "That's funny, isn't it? Raven's been killing herself over all of this, even though she knew she could have come to you at any time for forgiveness! All these months, she's been convinced that everything she's been doing is wrong, but she couldn't stop! That's funny!" He doubled over with heaving laughter, laughter that became choking coughs. Raven shut her ears to everything. Beast Boy was raining punches upon her head, Cyborg was shaking Robin like a rag doll, and Starfire's screams cut to her soul. It was too much.

The contrast between it all made it feel like her heart was being ripped into tiny, tiny pieces. The boy she used to love was screaming her deepest, darkest secrets to the only people in the world who had taken her in. Robin's voice went high and shrill, a cruel mockery of her own voice. "Oh, poor me! I'm a half-demon with a shitty father and no one loves me! Oh, Robin, you're the only one I can ever love! I don't know what I'd do without you, Robin!" The tears poured down her cheeks as her blood turned to ice.

And then Raven fainted upon the cold floor, with Robin coughing blood and Starfire shaking with silent screams and Beast Boy howling at the ceiling in his terrible wolf form and Cyborg smashing a chair against the wall over and over and all of the evil seemed to be leaking into the room in a black, black cloud—a cloud of evil as black as Raven's heart.


	8. Fighting

**Hey, pals and gals. I know this one's a bit short, but I really wanted to kick-start everything. It's crap. I know. Forgive me. I promise there's good material coming up soon, so if you can survive all the suckiness in this chapter, you'll find better stuff in the next. C: **

Oh, crap. She'd burned the coffee again.

Raven tucked a few strands of hair behind her ear and peered inside the latté machine. The charred liquid swilled around inside the pot, mocking her as the stench made her eyes water. She bit her lip in frustration and tossed the mess down the sink. Raven felt her stomach churn angrily. Pathetic. She couldn't even make a decent cup of coffee.

One of her co-waiters—Kevin? Kyle? Klark?—looked over his shoulder, balancing several mugs and a hell of a lot of plates on a tray. "Burned it again?" he called, opening the kitchen door with his foot. Raven nodded, not in the mood to talk. (How had the guy known she'd burned it before? Was she gaining a reputation for ruining perfectly good coffee? _Damnit._)

His sparkling eyes dimmed for a second. "Bummer, man. You'll get better, though." The waiter gave her an easy, reassuring grin as he disappeared into the endless sea of tables to be waited on, customers to be satisfied and orders to be taken. He wound through the crowded room effortlessly. _I bet he never burns coffee, _she thought, with just a trace of sourness. But she followed him with her eyes anyway.

She stood still for a second, watching the spiky blonde hair and perfect tan retreat into the main room of the café. His smile burned a hole in her mind—he didn't have especially white or perfect teeth, but it lit up his entire face. Eyes, cheekbones, chin. Stubbly chin. Lean cheekbones. Ocean-blue eyes. She remembered how he'd been friendly since she'd started work; offering advice, splashing her flirtily with dish water. She remembered how she'd pretended she couldn't open a pickle jar because she kind of, sort of wanted him to do it for her.

Raven shook herself and measured out new coffee grinds into the pot. He didn't like her. And she didn't—she couldn't—like him, either.

Suddenly there was a small, red-faced man pushing his way through the crowd in the back kitchen. Raven ducked her head and poured steamed milk into the machine. Crap. She didn't need this. She didn't need Albertan today. She just needed to finish her shift, get home and hide from the world—what she had been doing for the last three months. And she was pretty damn good at it, too.

Except when Albertan came along. When Albertan came along, there was nowhere to hide.

He shoved two waitresses carrying sandwiches out of his way, beady eyes fixed on the napkins she was using to clean up the milk she'd just spilled. Raven ducked her head and wiped the sticky liquid away, pleading to whoever was up there in the heavens ruling the world to please, please keep Albertan busy long enough for her to hide the mess.

But of course he came anyway.

"Rebecca—" he started, the cheap gel holding his hair in a frozen tidal-wave shape quivering. His complexion grew rosier. "Are those…_napkins…_you are holding?"

Raven looked down at the soggy mess of paper in her hand. "Yes, Mr. Albertan," she muttered, eyes lowered. If she could just apologize and get on with life, then there was only an hour left in her shift. She could be home by five thirty if she hurried.

But Albertan wasn't finished. He wouldn't be finished for a long time.

"How _many_ napkins are you holding, Rebecca?" he asked, voice dangerously soft. Raven looked down at the wad of napkins in her hand (which were getting her hands all gross and wet with cold, steamed milk). Did he honestly expect her to count them?

She looked him straight in the eye for a second and saw no mercy. So she counted them—peeling layer after layer apart, guessing on the disintegrated ones.

"Nineteen, sir."

"Nineteen?" he asked, like he hadn't just heard her say it. "_Nineteen, _Ms. Sutton?" His beetle-black eyes narrowed and a lock of dark hair sprang free from the tidal wave on his forehead. "Might I remind you that the customer limit is _two?_ You have stolen seventeen more than you are allowed, Ms. Sutton. Stolen. This is a federal offense. I could have your skinny little wrists clapped in handcuffs before you could blink."

_Stolen?_ What the hell? They were _napkins, _for Pete's sake! They were cheap little sheets of paper! There was a toddler sitting at table thirteen dumping approximately five million of them in his orange juice!

Raven dumped them in the trash and wiped her hands on her jeans. "I'm very sorry, Mr. Albertan. It won't happen again." _Leave me alone, you God-forsaken sexually repressed son of a b—_

"See that it doesn't, Ms. Sutton, or I shall be forced to fire you." Albertan gave her a last death glare before turning on one shiny Pleather heel. Raven resisted the strong desire to dump every last bit of her second batch of lattés over his stupid tidal wave head. And then when she looked down at the machine, she realized that somehow she had managed to burn this batch too.

_Oh. My. __God._

-------------

Raven took time only to grab her coat from the employee lockers in the back room before hurrying out into the street. The weather was warming up—it was all a cliché from some crappy book. Fresh new leaves had sprouted. The sidewalks glistened from some random shower earlier in the day. Warm breezes flew in from the south.

It was lost on her, because all Raven could see was that being an actual civilian in Jump City and not a superhero sucked. It sucked a lot.

She found the key to her apartment somewhere in her coat pocket before trekking up four stories of grimy stairs. Everything on the fourth level was painted a dismal gray, and the tarnished number nine on her front door swung back and forth on its single nail as she opened it. Raven shut the door quietly. You had to be quiet here. There were sad, divorced men and women living on either side of her and they freaked out if anyone made any noise above a whisper.

God, Raven hated life. She hated it so, so much.

She went up to the far wall beside her bed. And the cracked mirror showed her the truth—or at least as close to the truth as she'd ever gotten.

Raven's skin was pale, even paler than it had been when she'd been a Titan. Her long hair straggled down her back because she hadn't gotten it cut since she left the Tower. Dark violet showed at the roots, contrasting sharply with the Ash Brown dye she'd used. It barely managed to conquer the purple underneath. She was too skinny and her eyes were one big bruise. The faded jeans she'd pulled on that morning bagged around her knees and hung loose at her hips.

The truth sucked even more than life.

But then Raven stopped for a second, looked away from the mirror. There was a strange feeling bubbling up in her. She felt…frustrated. It cut through the numbing misery she'd felt for three months. She felt a wild, wild surge of energy. Her cheeks flushed over and she felt her dull eyes brighten, just a little. Suddenly all of the frustrated despair and empty thoughts disgusted her. She wanted to be more.

And then a crazy notion entered her head, and she smiled…just a little.

She wanted to be capable of fighting her own battles, capable of never feeling worthless, capable of winning her freedom by the sweat of her brow and the strength of her limbs. She wanted to fight back. She _would_ fight back. She would train and train until her muscles hardened, until she was strong in mind and body and heart, sell her soul to the devil and then stab him in the back if need be. She would do anything to prove that she could be broken, she could be battered, but she would never, never give up.


	9. Training

**Okay, Writer's Block should burn in hell. Really. I am _sooooo _sorry that this took so long! Ack, it must have been over a week. Sorry!**

**This chapter's kind of silly, but I was in a fabulous mood and wanted to share it with Raven. And you guys. I'm kind of sad that this fiction's winding down (I'm guessing maybe 2 or 3 more chapters? Yikes!) but, you know, all good things come to an end. I'm toying with the idea for a more humorous, frolicky type story, so yay! Hope you guys enjoy this one, even if it is a bit crazy. C:**

The stationary bike whirred beneath her as Raven pedaled furiously. She wiped a layer of sweat from her forehead, breath coming in short gasps. The muscles in her legs burned.

And then she beat her record time.

Raven slowed to a stop, looking at the small clock on the machine in disbelief. The truth blinked back at her in square red letters. Ten miles. Thirty-nine minutes and six seconds. She had smashed her record by a minute and a half.

Raven climbed off of the bike shakily and waited for her heart to slow to an only mildly alarming pace. A small grin quirked at the corner of her mouth and droplets of sweat dropped to the ugly brown carpet beneath her. The indoor gym sucked—there were moldy yoga mats in one corner of the room and slowly decaying gym shoes in another—but they had weights and stationary bikes. That was all she needed.

A tall, muscular woman brushed by her, then stopped. Raven vaguely recognized the woman as a regular here, one of the obsessed physical trainers who had too much time on their hands. "Broken your record yet?" she asked, and since she didn't sound sarcastic or patronizing Raven offered a smile between gasps for air.

"Just about three seconds ago," she said, and wiped more sweat from her forehead. The woman beamed.

"How long have you been training?"

She scuffed her toe, tracing the days back in her head. "Maybe two months?" That sounded right. God, had it really been five months since she'd left the Tower? It seemed…longer. A lifetime ago. She felt different than the Teen Titan Raven, different even than when she had powers. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling. Just…different.

"That's fantastic! Keep up the good work!" the woman said enthusiastically. She used the cheerful voice that physical trainers employed when they lied about how many repetitions on the weight machines their trainees would have to do, but Raven felt a small wave of satisfaction anyway.

As Raven showered in the vaguely mildewing locker room and headed to work, there was a small flush of pride on her cheeks. But then she remembered where she was going and who she would have to talk to, and the small victory faded into nonexistence.

There was still Albertan to deal with.

-------------

The small brass machine stared at her, a small red light on one side blinking slowly. Steam curled over one edge and twisted into the air like a snake—writhing coils looped over one another lazily. A strong smell of coffee cut through her senses and she imagined the charred gray mess inside apprehensively. It was dead. She knew it. The batch of coffee was going to be a sickening mixture of overcooked milk and burned sugar. She had killed it. She had killed the coffee.

Raven worried her lip with her teeth and popped the lid off of the small kettle. _If this thing is full of burned coffee, I'm going to commit suicide,_ she thought bleakly. She didn't really mean it. But she meant it enough for the thought to send cold fingers down her spine.

The lid was off, and it was heavy in her hand. A pungent aroma choked her throat.

She leaned over the side of the counter.

She shut her eyes.

She stayed there for more than a minute.

She totally wasn't going to look.

She would never look.

Never.

Never, ever, ever.

She would stay there until someone shipped her off to some mental house for people who seemed completely and totally incapable of doing the most simple of mundane tasks and leave her there until she got old. And then after she got old she would die. That was okay, though. She could be with her own kind there.

She then told herself she was being a bitch about this whole thing.

She looked.

She looked away.

She was hallucinating.

She looked back again.

And then she screamed with delight.

The boy that she told herself she didn't like was suddenly standing there behind her, wearing the hugest grin she had ever seen. Raven grabbed his hands on an impulse and felt a huge balloon of happiness swelling up in her chest, so big that the whole room was spinning in a dizzy circle. The boy laughed and spun her around. Raven was ridiculously happy about the whole thing.

"Oh my God! I did it! I made a whole freaking thing of coffee and I _didn't burn it!" _Her voice squeaked at the end of the sentence but she laughed again and the whole world was good. The boy laughed with her, and she felt a real, genuine happiness radiating from his smile.

"I told you, man! I told you you'd do it!"

The boy stopped spinning her and looked into her eyes with a smile playing about his lips. "You're Rebecca, right?" she asked, and Raven felt a happy flush over her cheeks. When he said her false name, it didn't sound like just a _name_. It sounded like something…_special_. Something that someone cool and popular and pretty and famous would be named. He made it sound better than it was. She liked that. She liked that a lot.

Raven nodded, happiness welling up in her. "Rebecca Sutton, at your service." She grinned giddily at him, vaguely aware that she probably sounded like a blathering idiot, but she ignored it. "And you're…"

"Keith," he finished for her, and looked down into her eyes with another smile. "So, Rebecca Sutton, how would you like to join me for coffee sometime?"

The world grew still and she could swear her heart stopped beating for…she didn't know. A second. A minute. A day. An ice age. All she knew was that suddenly the world was a gorgeous place and she totally had a place on it.

She had just been asked out by a beautiful, beautiful boy. She had just made her first batch of real coffee and hadn't burned it. She was completely and totally giddy and in love with the world and high on all of the joy.

"I'd like that," she managed to say, looking up into Keith's ocean-blue eyes. And then he started grinning and she started grinning because _he_ was grinning and suddenly they were both cracking up and they spun around and around and around and around, the room a dizzying whirl of bliss and all they could see were each other's eyes.

The entire kitchen's population was staring at them as they laughed and spun around and grinned goofily at each other, a small pot of coffee growing quietly cold behind them…All but one person, of course, because their store manager, Leslie Albertan, was sitting in his office, combing his tidal wave of hair lovingly. And Raven was damn glad about that.

-------------

No one used this part of the gym anymore, the gym owner told her—the empty basketball court had been converted into a space for all the broken punching bags. The gym had started karate classes that had been disbanded after three lessons. There were twenty soft, cushioned mats and approximately five thousand pieces of other equipment left to quietly decay in the forgotten room. Raven dragged one of the more intact ones from a corner and patched the gaping holes with duct tape from the gym's office. _It's my space now,_ she thought with a secretive smile, and it was all she needed.

-------------

The thuds of her punches echoed throughout the empty room. Sweat dripped from her forehead and curved down her cheek like a tear, then dropped soundlessly to the floor. Her breath came in ragged gasps, because it was so, so hard...The punching bag swayed back and forth and she drilled her fists into it. When she moved on to crunches, and then pushups, and finally to the weights in the corner, she could feel a wild, wordless joy singing inside of her veins, because this pain was the sweetest nectar she'd ever tasted. She felt strong. She knew she was stronger than Robin could have ever been, and in her mind she knew she had won.

That night, she sat alone in her small, cheap apartment, sweat-soaked clothing on the floor and blankets pulled up to her chin. Her muscles ached…and somehow it felt good. It felt…right. She felt whole.

Raven stood in front of the mirror and looked at herself. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, arms lean and bare in the flickering light. The Ash Brown dye had washed out and she had cut her hair back to chin-length a week ago. She slowly pulled her sleeves back and flexed one arm, then the next. Raven felt the corded muscle in her shoulders and smiled, just a little. And as she looked at herself again and felt a sliver of happiness cut through it all, power rushed into her head on silent wings. She looked down at her fingers and felt a little tingling around them. Her breath caught. And then she whispered, with a sense of hope that filled her through and though with a wonderful, heady joy…

"Azarath…Metrion…Zinthos…"

And for the first time in a long, long time, she felt a warm, welcoming tingle around her fingers; and then she floated over to her bed to meditate.


	10. Return

**For all you crazy people...This is not the end! But anyway, I'd like to thank all the reviewers that had a kind word for me last time. And for those of you with less-than-kind words? I'd like to thank you, too. You helped me to understand that maybe happiness isn't Raven's thing.**

**I realize that Chapter 9 was the least popular chapter of this story, and for all of you that were disappointed, I'm truly sorry. But I'd like to give a deep, heartfelt thank-you to XxNightfirexX, who kept me alive through all of my despair after getting some...unfavorable...reviews. Go read her stuff. Now. Wait, no, read this first. Then read her stuff. xD**

** So...read...now...and maybe review? As we near the end of this saga, and experience the wonderful, terrible things that life can throw at us, I hope you are all satisfied in the end.**

**Oh. And I have a poll now:D **

The happiness lasted for approximately four days. In one way, they were some of the best days of Raven's life; Albertan left her alone, Keith dropped by a couple times a day just to chat, and she felt stronger than ever.

But it always seemed that the higher she managed to fly, the harder it hurt her to fall.

She was hurting now. She was hurting a lot.

-------------

Raven hung her employee smock in the back room and drifted over to the sink, where Keith was scrubbing dishes.

"Keith?" She touched his arm softly. He turned his intense, ocean-blue eyes on her and she shivered, just a little. But then he gave her that melting smile, and she relaxed. If those eyes told her the world was destined to hell and everyone would die simultaneously, she would believe them. She would believe anything they told her. Anything.

"What's up, Rebecca?" He wiped his hands on a dish towel and leaned back a fraction on the counter. Raven bit her lip. She would always have trouble talking to him. He was too beautiful. He was too beautiful to like her.

"I—I just—wanted to—you know, you said—Would you like to go, um, grab some…" She cast her eyes about desperately for a food item to go "grab". Cake? Too sweet. Sandwich? Too heavy. Fruit? Too lightweight.

"Some…coffee?" They were in a coffee shop, after all. Coffee was logical. Coffee was good.

Keith grinned. Raven melted. "Coffee's cool," he said, and she smiled back a little.

The strange sick feeling in her stomach wouldn't go away, and she was suddenly and painfully reminded of all the cramping pains in her stomach back in the Tower. When she was cheating. With Robin. On Starfire. Raven closed her eyes for a second and willed the hot tears to go away. Her tongue felt swollen for a second, the entire inside of her mouth dry. She coughed.

"Rebecca?" His fingers drifted across hers and she yanked her hand away on an impulse. Raven opened her eyes and saw his concerned expression; she looked into his worried eyes. With a sharp flash of anger, she wanted to hurt him. She wanted to make the kind words and troubled eyes disappear and have a cruel voice and sneering mouth replace them. She wanted him to find someone worth his time. He shouldn't like her. He deserved better.

The hurt made sense now. All of the previous guilt that she had been ignoring rushed back in a painful wave and Raven squeezed her nails into her palm. One second…two seconds…_Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos…Calm, peace, serenity…_She willed the pain away and forced herself to look happy.

"Sorry," she said lightly, heart pounding hard against her chest. "I had to sneeze."

"Bless you in advance," Keith smiled, and Raven had to look away from his beauty.

-------------

They were outside. Girls passed by them and eyed Keith up and down. Raven could almost taste their envy. A few shot her dirty glares, and she welcomed them. Raven knew how to deal with contempt. She just didn't know how to comprehend the kindness.

Keith dumped sugar into his coffee. "So, Rebecca…"

_My name isn't Rebecca,_ she wanted to say. _My name is Raven. I'm a cheater and a fraud and you should go and find another girl. I don't deserve someone like you. I__don't deserve__ any__thing._

"…how's life?"

_Life sucks. I should go write depressing poetry and wear all black and walk around with a badge on my chest that says, "Screw you, world!" I should be one of those emo kids that you see sitting in the corner, scribbling in their journals abou__t how much they wish they were dead__. Would you cry if I died, Keith? Would you waste tears on a half-demon, or would you laugh at my funeral and tell all your friends that you were __just __toying with the emotions of one?_

"It's okay," she said. In the black mirror of her coffee, Keith's reflection trembled with her beating heart.

He put a finger underneath her chin and lifted her face up until she was looking into his eyes. "I don't think you're okay, Rebecca." Her face flushed. She dropped her gaze.

And Keith waited. He would wait until the end of the earth, until the sky burned red and the ground trembled with the power of Judgment Day. She saw it in a flash of understanding. She couldn't blow him off. He actually cared about knowing why she was unhappy.

It made the hurt worse. But she wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him so badly that she could taste it.

Raven tried to turn into a very, very small person with a tiny, tiny voice. "My name isn't Rebecca," she murmured, and he looked confused.

"What?"

"I said, my name isn't Rebecca."

"You have a stage name? Are you an actress or something?"

Raven felt the frustration and guilt welling up in her like the tears in her eyes. _Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos…Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos…_

"I'm not an actress. I'm a Teen Titan."

Her heart pounded like she had just run a marathon and she could see the emotions flitting through Keith's eyes—Disbelief. Confusion. A slow dawning of recognition as he put her violet hair and pale skin together and imagined her in dark clothes. And then there was something different. Anger? Contempt? Maybe it was a bitter disappointment…

He looked at her and saw the secrets shimmering in her eyes, and Raven knew he was going to leave. She could almost see the disgust on his face—he knew she was a freak, and he knew that she didn't belong in normal society. She could see the gears moving in his head.

Finally Keith tilted his chair back and considered her. His gaze swept over her face and she couldn't repress the shiver she got when his intense eyes met hers. She could feel the blood rushing through her ears. Oh, God. He was going to tell her how repulsed he was. Right now.

"So, what are you called, then?"

Raven blinked at him, confused. "You mean, my name?"

He gave her one of those smiles reserved for people of an unusually low intelligence level. "Yeah, I mean your name. You're obviously not named Rebecca."

_What the hell? _Why wasn't he giving her one of those looks that said he was being too kind for his own good and leaving? Why wasn't he calling her a freak and telling her to run back to the Tower? Her thoughts were muddled and all she could do was stare at him blankly.

Finally her head cleared a little. "Raven. I'm Raven." As soon as she said it, Raven cursed her parents for giving her such a moronic name. _Raven._ Her mother was Arella, her father was Trigon. How the hell did they come up with _Raven?_

"So, Raven…" Keith was looking at her intently, cupping his chin in both hands. He said her name like it was an odd new candy flavor, and he wasn't quite sure how to react to it. He gave her a strange look—not a bad one, just…strange. As if he were trying to figure out exactly why a Teen Titan was sitting in front of him, wearing ratty jeans and a faded "Donate Blood!" T-shirt and looking at him like he had just sprouted tentacles from both nostrils.

"You're a Teen Titan, then?" His eyes were swallowing her, sucking her soul dry. Raven looked back into the depths of her cold coffee.

"Yes."

"You left the Tower?"

"Yes."

"Willingly, I'm guessing?"

"Yes."

"Can you answer a question without using the word 'yes'?"

"What?" Raven blinked at him again, cursing his gorgeous eyes. "Oh. I can. Yeah."

His expression was terribly, terribly amused. "Why'd you leave, then?"

_Oh my God. No. I can't tell him. I will never, never tell him. I'll make up some excuse. I'll—I'll—I don't know what I'll do._ If she told him the truth, there was no way he would ever be able to get past it. No, she would just say something else, like…like…

"I was cheating on Starfire with Robin."

The amused twinkle in Keith's eyes was gone, all of the glimmering lights in his expression sucked away as soon as she said it.

_Oh my God. Oh my God. _She would kill herself. She would just commit suicide, right then and there. There were plenty of things she could use that were lying innocently on the table. A fork. A swizzle stick. There were probably large amounts of alcohol inside the building. She could drink herself to death. Maybe she would go visit Willy Wonka and drown in a vat of chocolate.

Then again, she was already very clearly insane. Maybe she would be shipped off to a mental institution where men in white coats would take her to the happy hospital and give her sleepy potion three times a day.

Keith dropped his hands underneath the table. "Say that again?"

Raven closed her eyes against the tears fighting their way to the surface. Her lungs were encased in ice and she could barely breathe. "Starfire was dating Robin. And Robin and I—we—we just—"

All of the laughter was gone from his face and his eyes bored a hole in her skin. "Tell me," he said. And she did.

-------------

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

It was a good question.

Keith was looking at her and she felt herself crumble a little inside. She couldn't face his expression. The shame and guilt and absolute awfulness of the situation hit her. She was pathetic. That was all there was to it. She. Was. Nothing.

Raven gave up her battle with the tears and let them pour out. She wanted them to burn her and scour her and leave her a dry, crackling shell, filled with nothing but ash that could blow away in the wind and scatter to all four corners of the universe. She didn't want to wreak herself on the world anymore. The world was filled with evil—_c__onsumed_ by evil. And it didn't need another teenage screw-up bringing any more in.

She buried her face in her arms and gave into the sobs, and all she could feel besides the horror wracking her body was Keith's hand slowly, slowly stroking her hair.

-------------

"You do realize what you have to do, don't you?"

His voice came an eternity later. Raven dragged a hand across her eyes and felt her throat burn. The tears left her head pounding with a dull ache.

"What?" Sandpaper coated her throat and she swallowed a little.

Keith took his hand back and crossed his arms. "Well, it's obvious, isn't it?"

The tears threatened to overwhelm her again. "Keith, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You have to go back."

Raven let out a short, sharp laugh that sounded like a sob—it was so like hilarity, and yet so completely joyless. "Keith, you must be on crack. I can't go back there. They would—they would—"

There were no words for such a ridiculous statement.

He banged his hand down on the table and Raven jumped. "They would welcome you back with open arms, Raven. Aren't they your _friends?" _The slightly mocking tone to his voice caused her to flinch. And then she thought about it, just for a second. They were her friends…weren't they?

No. Keith was being insane. Beast Boy would rip her to shreds before she took a step into the Tower. They would destroy her.

"Keith—" she started. "Keith. You don't understand. I _can't_ go back there. Do you understand what I _did?"_

He gave her such an intense stare that she wondered. _Maybe…Maybe I should. Maybe it would be for the best._

Raven drove her teeth into her lip and almost cried out at the pain—but it cleared her head. And she knew she could never go back to the Tower. The realization of that simple fact sent a stab of self-loathing through her body, but she stood up. She couldn't.

"I can't, Keith," she managed. And then she walked away, leaving him sitting at an outdoor table with two mugs of cold coffee and the gradual awareness that Raven, the girl he thought was so different from others, was nothing but a coward.

-------------

She was standing in a deep, deep forest, with trees so mutilated that they bled from scars in their trunks and cried out in slow, tree-like cries of pain. The light filtering through their twisted branches was murky. Raven looked at her flesh and saw marks of abuse—dark, blueberry stains of bruises and tattered skin, with wounds that had dried in long garnet crusts of blood. Her bones melted like soft wax beneath her fingers and with a terror so complete that it overwhelmed her brain, she saw the shape of her arm coil around and around a nearby branch like a snake.

She ran, bones sagging underneath her skin as if they were barely half-solid—and the trees followed, raking at her skin and clothes, screaming in pain and cursing the one that had brought it upon them. And when she had fallen to her knees, bleeding from a dozen wounds and shaking with silent sobs, the clouds opened up and there was an angel there. He sang about a princess who was really a black rose and a prince who was really a pack of cards, and his ocean-blue eyes seared her spirit. _Keith?_ she had wondered, but then he pulled a dagger from his bleeding chest and she saw he had no heart…

She woke up, heaving for air. The dream had battered her senses and she felt her skin wildly.

Her bones were solid, her skin was smooth and unmarked. The realization that it was only a dream washed over her senses until she fell back on the pillows, limp with relief.

Raven took a deep, shuddering breath. And maybe it was just the aftermath of the dream or the strange Keith-like angel she had seen…but somehow, she knew she had to go back.

-------------

The journey to the Tower took a minute—or maybe it took an hour, or a day, or a year. She was so overwhelmed with a numbing coldness that she barely remembered the dark streets or broken streetlights. And then suddenly, she was standing at the foot of the Tower.

A trivial thought struck her. _It looks smaller than it did_. Somehow, the amount of time she spent agonizing after it had made the building grow so large that the thought of crossing the living room seemed like it would take a lifetime. And yet she was here. And it hadn't taken a lifetime.

Raven found the back door, sparse moonlight illuminating the metal door with a cold shine. She slowly, slowly decoded the alarms. The steps clattered noisily as she found her way up them.

A small thought broke through the numbness, rising into her consciousness slowly, as if suspended on a glob of goo in a lava lamp: _I wonder if I woke them up?_

Another thought: _They're going to kill me._

And another one: _Oh, God._

She stepped into the pitch-black living room—and then suddenly there was a cold circle of metal pressing against her back. Terror overwhelmed every thought. She was so, so, completely, _dead._

"Sneaking up on the Teen Titans?" A deep, chocolatey voice reached her ears. "You must be even stupider than you look." It paused. "Not that I can actually see you. BB! Turn up the lights!"

And a split second before Beast Boy hit the switch, Raven found her voice. "Cyborg?"

The light seared her eyes. The coldness at her back withdrew. And suddenly there was a complete, total silence.

Raven forced her eyes open. Beast Boy fluttered in the air as a hawk before emitting a startled cry. He landed on the carpeted floor as a human and stared at her. Cyborg towered over her, disbelief etched into his face. Starfire was hovering in the air by the door. Her face flitted through emotions too quickly to recognize.

There was a single question burning at Raven's lips. She swallowed the bitter taste of fear and forced it out. "Where's Robin?"

Silence. One second…two seconds…three seconds…Raven felt the blood rushing in her ears and a rising tide of horror engulfed her senses.

Finally Starfire's feet touched the floor. There was no emotion in her face as she answered, "Robin is dead."


	11. Answers

**Whoa, it's been WAY too long! I am so, so sorry about the dead-****ness****, everyone. I don't know why, but**** everything in my life got really insane really quickly. I don't think I've checked my email in two weeks, let alone gotten on the Internet for fun. But anyway…I know you guys have been salivating over the cause of Robin's death, so I wrote a super-long chapter this time. C: ****Enjoy,**** guys! **

**Also.**** I have a poll. You have time. ****So…Yeah.**** Two plus two equals three. Hee-hee.**

As the gray carpet ground into her cheek, Raven was aware of a babbling above her, but as she could do was shudder with fear and rage and a burning horror until her entire body was consumed with feverish chills and she shook like a child left out in the cold. There was a sparkling haze over the world and she could barely see through the numbed tears that forced their way from her eyes. The pain ravished her five senses—a screeching vortex of wind, a pulsing veil of red, the metallic taste of blood, a stench of rotting meat, the sickly-sweet reek of poisonous fumes…and the way she gouged and tore at the flesh of her arms, keening with pain and grief and wanting above everything to be consumed by the raging storm within her soul.

The worst part, though, was that she remained conscious the whole time. And all she could do was writhe at the floor and shudder in her tears as a wild, feral animal inside of her screamed for release. She was aware of strong, cool hand clutching at her limbs and shouting above her body, but all that existed in her world were the flames that scoured her flesh, prolonging each second into a whirlwind of agony.

And then nothing.

---------------------

There was a soft light above her that found its way through her eyelids. Raven murmured a protest, wanting to stay in her deep, warm slumber forever. The light grew stronger and she tried to raise her arm to shield from her eyes, but as soon as she did it zinged with pain. She cried out.

Raven forced her eyes open as she emerged from a deep sleep. There were white, sterile walls surrounding her and a soft bed beneath her. Her head spun as she blurrily tried to catalogue the machines around her: no luck. They probably all had names, but she couldn't give any to them herself. Raven felt a slight tug at her wrist and saw various tubes trailing from her arm to another blinking machine beside her.

There were clean white bandages wrapped around her arms. She closed her eyes, confused. What…?

And then the truth rushed back in all of its barefaced horror.

Raven clutched herself with frail arms and succumbed to tears, tears that shook her frame and left her empty and dry inside even as they soaked her flimsy nightgown. There was a warm body next to hers, giving off an antiseptic smell that made her throat burn. "It's okay," the body whispered. "Let it all out."

She couldn't stop. The tears streamed from her face and she kept uttering weak, plaintive cries that sickened her even as she begged for Robin to come back. The warm frame kept trying to tell her to calm down before she tired herself out but Raven sobbed and shuddered and wailed until the body moved. "Somebody get something to put her down!" The voice blared through her trembling mind until she felt a small prick at her arm, and then the thoughts in her mind turned to soap bubbles, shimmering enticingly in the soft light.

And then nothing. Again.

---------------------

It took time for Raven to wake from the sucking pull of drug-induced sleep, and when she did, the thoughts in her mind took a little while to drift back into place. She was…in a hospital…she had bandages on her arms…something…something bad had happened. Something worse than she could comprehend.

But before she could struggle with the final thought, Raven noticed Starfire sitting in the corner of the room, watching her with those brilliant, slanted eyes.

Her face was hidden behind a sheet of fiery hair, and Raven found herself trembling. Starfire could do anything to her. Scream at her. Hurt her. Pummel her and beat her until she was punished for the crimes she had committed.

Raven felt herself paralyzed by fear and tried to draw the power into her mind, but a splitting headache interfered. She cried out and Starfire's head swiveled towards her. The Tamaranian stretched fluidly and drifted over to Raven's bed, eyes burning fire and ice and accusing of everything she had done. Starfire stopped a foot from the bed.

"You lied."

The words were simple enough, but it was the tone that shocked her the most. They sounded…empty. So full that they were empty. There was rage and pain and grief and horror and a tempest of emotion that was channeled towards the one person left to blame. It was a desperate attempt for release from the emotions that ravaged them both. And the one responsible for the entire thing was sitting in a hospital bed, clothed in a disposable paper nightgown decorated with pink and green dinosaurs, trembling like a leaf blown in the wind.

Raven closed her eyes against the pain. "I did," she said, voice barely squeezing from the dismay choking her throat.

Starfire's eyes pinned her to the wall like a dead butterfly. "You lied. You cheated. You kissed someone you should not have."

"Starfire, I am so, so sorry. I—I don't know what I was doing. I didn't know what I was thinking. I—"

When Starfire cut through her desperate babble, the words sang with an undertone of cold, cold anger…and above all, the terrible knowledge that nothing could be done. And yet somehow, the words she uttered were the most chilling thing of all.

"The galaxies do not revolve around you, once-friend Raven." Her beautiful features twisted into a terrible frown. "And you would do well to notice someone beyond yourself."

The door slammed and the room's aura tasted of bitterness, but all Raven could hear were Starfire's words echoing around the room.

Echoing…

Echoing…

Echoing.

---------------------

Time blurred in the hospital. Sunlight sometimes streamed through her small window, broken up by pouring rain and howling winds. Sleep mingled with consciousness and emotions ran together in a confusing stream. She occasionally drifted off into an uneasy sleep filled with nightmares, only to awake to Starfire's haunting words. Raven escaped for only moments in her dreams before the lingering hatred in the luminous green eyes woke her again, screaming. The nurses whispered as they passed her doorway and she overheard plans to move her to the permanent ward or even the rehab center.

There was no energy to move outside of her bed. Hospital aids came in every few days to bathe her and she felt only a dull shame. They tried to make her eat. She screamed. More tubes were shoved into her arms. Raven sometimes pondered the bleak thought of yanking them all out and letting herself die there, but she couldn't find the will to move her arms. She lay there tiredly instead, thoughts wandering the same well-trodden paths.

Because through it all—through the tangled dreams and disturbing sights and sounds, more virulent than Starfire's terrible words and more potent than her thoughts of death—was one thought that kept her muscles tensed and her eyes rubbed raw from tears. It was killing her as much as it saved her from insanity. It was the one reason she existed: to find the truth. The truth to the question that rang in her ears during every waking moment…

_How did he die? How did he die? How did he die?!_

---------------------

There came a day when hushed whispers drifted through Raven's closed door. She pulled herself from another half-asleep nightmare and pricked her ears. Raven almost found the will to move a foot out of her bed and listen at the door. She twitched her toes.

It was so much easier to lie still, though. So she did.

Muffled whispers. A voice—female, clipped and businesslike—that was barely audible was speaking: "…not a word in three weeks…barely functions…an abnormal lethargy that is punctuated by…sleep patterns irregular…" The voice petered out.

She barely cared. It wasn't like they could make her move or anything. She could stay there the rest of her life.

A murmur now, from a rumbling male voice: "…move her to closed ward…possible delusional beha…yes, self-mutilation as well…uh-huh…I see… Yes, possibly a case of typical insanity…Yes. Yes, we'll move her tomorrow."

A dull shock rang through her senses. They were going to move her? To an insanity ward?

Raven wondered how she felt about it. Nothing would change, would it? She would still be in a bed and she would still be fed through a tube. No one would bother her. No one would care.

Something hurt her, inside. She remembered the moment the words left Starfire's lips and she remembered the pain that had engulfed her. She reminded herself that she still wanted to find out how Robin died. A spark of energy sparked in her veins. The strange longing to never move left her, and she felt frustration welling up in her veins, a desire for action overcoming every shred of lethargy in her body. Yes, she would go find the truth. She would go somewhere and find out how Robin died. And then she would kill herself.

She smiled, just a little. There was a mad glee that came along with choosing her own destruction. For once, she was the one choosing to die. She was the one inflicting pain upon herself. And she was the only one who would do the final deed.

Raven heard the whispers outside move away from her door, and she swung her feet out of the bed. Stars winked in front of her eyes as blood rushed out of her head. When they cleared, Raven saw darkness outside of the window. She gave a lemon-sucking grin. Darkness made her path much, much easier.

She ripped the tubes from her arm and bit back a scream of pain. Blood spurted from her arm as the tubes writhed on the floor, squirting thick orange fluid from the tips. Raven dizzily tore a strip of the white sheet from her bed and wrapped it around her wrist. Blood soaked through in seconds.

The pink and green dinosaurs were gone: the disposable nightgown was now embellished with bright purple clowns. She bared her teeth and ripped it from her body, letting the thin paper crumple to the ground. Better to be naked than to look ridiculous.

As Raven surveyed the window, she noticed a small camera blinking in the top corner of the room. She summoned the icy black energy from her hands and shorted out the machine's power. It died with a high-pitched whine. The window was even less of a problem—it was secured only with a metal bolt that opened from the inside. Raven slid the window up and shivered as chilly night air cut through her bare skin.

Her head fit through the window, but her wider shoulders hit the wood frame. Raven grimaced and tilted her body diagonally, then fell ungracefully onto the pavement below. She yelped in pain as the cement scraped her bare skin.

God was smiling on her that night. The streets around her were empty, and Raven blessed the darkness for shielding her exposed body from curious eyes. She shivered a little—the escape seemed too easy and too unobstructed to be real. All it had cost her was a little blood and a few dead skin cells. Surely there was some kind of alarm. Surely they were sending someone after her.

Raven stood still for a moment, ears straining for any kind of warning bell…But there was nothing. Nothing at all.

She took a deep, steadying breath that nevertheless made her head spin. Blood trickled down her fingers, dropping soundlessly to the street below, and puddle there in a small red pool. She wondered if anyone would notice it in the morning. But she couldn't spare time to mop it up. She had answers to find and suicide to commit.

Raven jogged to the end of the street and peered around the corner, brain strangely calm. Her heart leapt against her rib cage and her hands shook, but her thoughts were clear. She would go to the Tower. She would make someone tell her how Robin died. And then she would throw herself off the roof.

Her feet moved of their own accord, and never once did she look back.

---------------------

The Tower's alarms were spun glass beneath her crackling black power. Raven crept up the metal stairs and passed through the living room like a wraith. She averted her eyes from the endless, silly things from her life before corruption—the coffee machine Cyborg was so proud of; Beast Boy's purple sneakers sitting lopsidedly on the couch; a single coppery strand of Starfire's hair, gleaming in the moonlight. Constant, painful reminders. Raven closed her eyes and forced the sorrow from her mind. Emotion would only make it all the harder to kill herself.

Cyborg's door whooshed open. Raven flicked on a light. He looked peaceful—lying on his metal slab of a bed, power cords feeding electricity into his internal sockets. She almost smiled until she remembered why she was there.

Raven steeled herself and brusquely yanked the cables from his arm. He jolted awake, face twisted into a panicked confusion. "What the—"

His round eye took in her complete lack of clothes first, and then focused on the blood dripping down her arm and glazed eyes. Cyborg sat up slowly. She could see the gears working in his head.

He finally took a deep breath, averting his eyes from her bare skin. A faint blush colored his dark cheeks. "D'you…d'you want a shirt or something?"

She gave him a vampire smile and he shuddered a little. "Sure."

---------------------

Cyborg massaged his temples. "Why are you here, Raven? You're supposed to be chilling in the hospital."

She drew her knees up to her chest and felt Cyborg's enormous sweat pants slide down a little on her hips. "I…I wanted answers," she said honestly. The crazy energy that had possessed her during her escape had fizzled out, leaving her drained. She put her hands over her eyes, seeing bright bursts of color behind her closed eyes as she pressed down slightly.

He gave a rumbling sigh. "What kind of answers, Rae? It's like three in the morning."

Raven avoided his eyes, breath choked off for a second as she imagined Robin's cold, dead eyes staring into hers. She could see his chalky skin ashy mouth in her mind, could feel his mouth crushed against hers. Her head swam.

Cyborg took her shoulders as she sagged to the left. "Raven. Maybe you should get some sleep." His bright red opti-eye stared into hers worriedly.

"I just…I just want to know how it happened." The words left her mouth, carried on nothing but the faintest of breaths. Her heart constricted painfully.

She pushed herself against the wall and let the tears drip onto the floor. Cyborg settled back on his metal bed and passed a huge hand in front of his eyes. "Do you really want to know?" he asked in his chocolate voice. "You're not going to hurt yourself or anything?"

Raven tasted the lie on her tongue and nodded instead. He looked relieved, and then abruptly grave again.

"He was doing drugs, Raven." Horror strangled her throat and she pressed her forehead against her knees, wanting above everything to block out the sound of Cyborg's voice but knowing that she needed to listen more than anything in the world. "He was dealing out of the Tower for a bit of extra cash, and he was using some himself. Ecstasy. He overdosed one night when you were gone."

Cyborg's voice went on and on, telling her everything, destroying her entire word with his simple words, but the only thing Raven could hear was Robin's voice, echoing over and over in her mind, and she felt the numbing caress of death with every syllable.

_We're your friends, Raven. We care about you._

_Oh my God, Raven, are you okay? _

_I'm here for you. You can tell me anything. Anything in the world you want to tell me, I'll listen…_

_I thought you'd understand, Raven! Can't you see what I'm trying to do? Can't you see what I'm doing for you?_

_I told you I was okay!_

_I did it because…I love you._

Raven shuddered in tears that could never express her all-consuming despair, and Cyborg looked at her with pitying eyes. "I'm really sorry, Raven," he said, and his voice was thick with sorrow.

"I know, Cyborg." Her heart squeezed painfully as she struggled for air with lungs encased in ice. But she managed thee more words before she succumbed to the darkness behind her eyes.

"I am too."

**Ooh, guess what? I have a poll. You should go answer it.**


	12. Freefall

**Author's Note: It's been too long. I know. I apologize. In fact, I beg for your forgiveness. I had this horrible Writer's Block and I didn't feel like doing ANYTHING. But…I finished this! Finally! Yay! So…after this there's only one more chapter. ARE YOU EXCITED?! I'm excited. Could you tell? :D **

**Enjoy, my little muffins!**

The city shimmered with heat—temperatures skyrocketed to over ninety degrees. All day. Every day. Humidity levels were through the roof. Even the reporters on TV, who had dozens of people to fix their hair and makeup every few minutes, looked tired and sweaty as they declared the utter lack of news in Jump City. May rolled into June and June soon burned its way into July. Fireworks split open the velvet sky on Independence Day, and the city seemed to be smothered in a blanket of heat.

The Tower was beyond freezing.

With short, sharp words, Starfire informed the Titans that death was celebrated on her planet through cold. It didn't matter that Robin had been dead for months. It didn't matter that their air conditioning bills were costing the Jump City government thousands of dollars a week. It didn't matter that Beast Boy hated the cold, or that Cyborg's circuits sometimes shorted out because they were crusted over with frost, or that Raven was desperately in need of a new uniform that covered up at least a little of her legs.

Starfire ignored it all.

The Tamaranian had replaced her cheery purple clothes with metal in the deepest shade of black. Her arms shone with cold silver bands. There was nothing playful or happy about her face anymore: she had lost weight, and you could see her sharp cheekbones almost punching through her thin flesh. Violet circles lined her over -bright eyes, and her skin grew taut and pale. In fact, Starfire bore an unnerving resemblance to her sister, Blackfire…and yet somehow her steely green eyes were even deadlier.

She looked like crap.

They all did.

--

Raven wandered through the weeks in a haze: she barely slept and hardly ate. A thick fog of horror hung over the Tower, clouding their faces, dulling their minds. It was always quiet now…there were no fights over the remote control or heated arguments over tofu. No one rang the doorbell to deliver pizza. Beast Boy was pale and weak; Cyborg had buried himself in work. Starfire stayed in her room with the air conditioner blasting.

And Raven huddled on the roof of the Tower, shivering because the cold from the inside leaked into the air outside. The metal sapped warmth from her body as quickly as Starfire's presence sapped her spirit. And sometimes when the skies opened up and rained, it turned to tiny splinters of ice as it came in contact with the cloud of winter that surrounded the Tower. But she let it chill her—almost welcomed the biting slivers of ice as they tore her skin—because all she wanted was for the cold to freeze her heart and make it numb, so she could never love and never touch and never feel again.

It was a miracle that there hadn't been any attacks. Raven doubted that they could have fought off a pair of bunny slippers in their current condition. And she wondered if they would ever be a team again, if they would ever protect the city again, or if Jump City was fated to die from neglect and corruption. And the sometimes Raven wondered if the Teen Titans were fated to die as well, just as their leader had died, and just as the girl responsible dreamed of ending her life.

One thing kept her from suicide.

_Keith. _

She was afraid to go down to the coffee shop and see him. She was terrified that he would blame Robin's death on her and spurn her like the demon she was. Raven clung to the memory of his sea-bright eyes like the now-ragged teddy bear Starfire clutched when she wanted the smell or the touch or the memory of Robin, the boy who won it for her at a cheap carnival game. Her boyfriend. Her boyfriend who had cheated on her for Raven. A boyfriend like Keith could be, if Raven ever found the courage to face him.

So one day when she needed him so badly that she could taste it, she went down to the coffee shop herself.

--

The city was bright with sunlight and bustling with shoppers. Raven stumbled down the familiar sidewalks to the shop, inconspicuous in faded jeans and one of Beast Boy's ratty purple shirts. She felt fear rise up in her throat—but more than that, she felt a glimmer of hope that maybe Keith would take the responsibility from her shoulders and soothe it all away.

Raven stopped at the cheerful glass door decorated with a flickering OPEN sign. Her heart pounded with the rhythm of a steel band behind her and she shook from the bass drum vibrating the streets. More to escape the rumbling beat of the drums than out of an actual desire to face Keith's wrath, she slipped inside.

A bell tinkled from above her head. Everything inside looked exactly the same as it had months ago: pistachio-green walls with a dark wooden trim and silver cappuccino machines bubbling in the corners. Serious, would-be writers tapped furiously at their laptops, cups of coffee all but ignored in front of them. A bored, pretty-as-a-picture girl chewing gum leaned against the counter, dressed in her employee smock. Raven was pretty sure her name was Becky. _Or maybe it was Bertha…_

She walked hesitantly up to the counter and Becky—_Barbara? Beretta?_ _Beatrice?—_tapped away at her cell phone, reciting the monologue in a very cool I-don't-give-a-crap voice. "Welcome to the Last Drop Café, my name is Beth—" _Beth! That was it! _"—and I'll be serving your every whim this afternoon, so how may I take your order?" Her voice was uninterested until she looked up at Raven's face, and her brightly painted lips parted.

"Rebecca?" she asked, mascaraed eyes squinting. "God, is that you? Girl, you look like shit!"

Raven smiled wanly. "Um, Beth, is Keith here?" Her stomach lurched a little even though there was nothing in it.

Beth pulled out a cigarette from her apron pocket and lit it expertly, sucking in the smoke with a deep breath. "You didn't know?" she asked, and breathed in more of the poisonous fumes.

"Um…what?" Raven kept her voice steady, but she felt cold tendrils of dread clutching at her heart.

The girl finally realized that she was chewing gum and smoking at the same time, and spat the gum into a trash can. Her eye-shadowed look cut straight to Raven's heart. "Were you two, like, going out or something?" She winked and leaned over the counter conspiratorially. Her smoke-laced breath seared Raven's lungs. "Killer couple. He was a hottie, too. Sorry about the whole…_you know_." Her expression was that of bland curiosity and a little bit of gossip-laden intrigue at Raven's confusion.

"What are you talking about?" Her breath was coming faster now, chilly fingers dancing down her spine. Beth blinked her overly made-up eyes and took another pull on the cigarette. The smoke churned angrily in Raven's stomach and she wanted to throw up.

"Did he not tell you? He's been at college for, like, two whole months." Raven's expression must have turned alarming because Beth jumped over the counter in a way-cool, fluid motion, revealing up-to-the-second clothes. Her glossy hair swirled as she crouched beside Raven. "Ohmigod, Rebecca. Are you okay?"

She was on the floor. Why was she on the floor?

_He was a hottie, too._

Her breath came fast in sharp bursts and the room was swirling away from her.

_Were you two, like, going out?_

Colors bleached away to gray and Beth's hip, stylish clothes and horrified expression blurred into nothing. Her voice shrilled into Raven's ear. "Jesus, I'm sorry! Look, he said you two were going out or something but he said it wasn't vitally important to tell you goodbye!"

_Sorry about the whole…you know._

He was gone? He was gone. Why was he gone? _Where_ had he gone?

Beth's voice turned frantic. "Ohmigod, someone help! I don't know if she's breathing!"

_Did he not tell you?_

Why hadn't he told her?

_Did he not tell you?_

She couldn't live like this.

_Did he not tell you?_

No.

He hadn't told her.

He hadn't told her anything.

--

When the paramedic told her it was okay to go home, Raven suddenly found herself in the Tower's living room without remembering how she got there. She sat on the floor and rocked back and forth, blankly staring out the moon-drenched windows. She felt nothing. Not anger or sadness or spite or desperation.

Nothing.

Keith. Was. Gone.

He had left her. He had gone to live his own life without giving a crap for anyone else's. He hadn't cared about her. Just like everyone else in the whole entire world.

Just like Robin.

After an endless amount of time, Raven stood up. Her heart was a block of ice. Her skin was cold to the touch. And she had made up her mind to do something that she had been thinking about endlessly for a long, long time.

She passed Cyborg's room without a flicker of indecision. Raven heard his snores echoing through his metal-lined room. She didn't smile.

Beast Boy's door was cracked open, and as she glided past she saw his dark form inside. He had huddled inside his blankets, shivering from cold, twisted around a stuffed animal in a vain effort to keep warm. She didn't feel sympathy.

The door to Starfire's room was closed tightly, but Raven soundlessly wrenched the doors open with her icy black powers. The sheer force of it left her reeling: power crackled along every nerve in her body and icy bursts of energy swept through her veins like cold fire. She was finally in control of her emotions.

She could finally harness them in any way she cared.

Starfire lay upside-down on her bed, clinging to the ragged teddy bear. Her face was hidden in a tangle of lank, unwashed red hair and she hadn't removed her armor as she slept. Raven floated over to the Tamaranian's bed and looked down at the girl, who had never wanted anything but love and had never done anything to deserve the grief that Raven bestowed upon her. Just for a moment, a wave of all-consuming sorrow washed over her.

And so Raven whispered to Starfire everything she had ever wanted to say: about the jealousy and the envy and how Raven had always wanted to be happy like her and about Robin and the mall and Dr. Light's escape and her birthday and how Robin had beat her and the terrible, terrible longing she had felt for his touch. And then her voice broke, but still the words poured out in the flood that had always been waiting, always waiting to spill over and make things right. Raven told Starfire how terribly she had always wanted to tell her and about everything in the world that had made her lie.

And then the flood ceased.

Raven looked down once more at the girl, pale, and tired even in her dreams, and mourning in every way she knew how. Raven knew Starfire would never hear her confession. She would never know why Raven had done the things she did or why she did them. She would never know.

And then Raven stepped silently out of the room and glided to the roof. She didn't notice Starfire slowly stirring in that misty place between dreams and reality, and was unaware of the fact that the alien had caught every word.

--

Cold surrounded her. The breeze that cooled Jump City turned to a chilling wind in the wintry veil that blanketed the Tower. Raven dropped her cloak to the ground, and barely noticed the icy razors that bit into her skin. The moon saturated everything with an arctic light, rinsing over all color and bleaching it white. Raven let the rays of glacial radiance wash over her and her mind emptied. She didn't think about the rest of the world. She didn't care what anyone else would think of this.

It was her decision, and hers alone.

Her mind blank, Raven stepped over the railing that kept people from falling off of the roof. She stood there on a small metal ridge, her back to the railing but holding onto it with her arms. Raven let the freezing wind wash over her, but she didn't feel its ghostly caress.

Her entire life was behind her: the tortuous childhood; the nightmare-inducing prepubescent stage; and the pointless teenage years. She had lied and cheated and lived when she was supposed to die. She had hurt people and killed others and caused their loved ones unsurpassable grief. She had done nothing worthy. She had done nothing worth praising.

She was a waste of a life.

Raven tilted her head up to the moon one last time, and a thought ran through her that caused tears to slip down her cheeks.

_I am truly Trigon's daughter._

The thought was too much to bear. She let go of the handholds and teetered on the edge of the Tower for a final second: hoping that maybe her passing would end the destruction that followed her.

And then she wrenched herself away from everything solid and spiraled to the ground below.

--

The first beautiful seconds were like flying.

Raven fell downwards in a smooth arc: horizontal to the earth, with her hands outspread and fingers cupped together, holding the precious seconds close to her before they all disappeared. The wind was like a feral animal, tearing at her face and arms, but all she could feel was a numbing emptiness inside of her.

It was better than guilt.

It was better than shame.

And it was a bittersweet freedom.

But as the winds turned savage and tumbled her over and over in the air, and the roof of the Tower grew farther and farther away, Raven felt a flicker of…something. Something that wasn't emptiness or shame or guilt or the terrible desire to die. Something that didn't make her want to scream at her ruin of a life or weep at the pointless years of agony. It was cutting through her numbed heart, glittering with contrast to the dull snowfield that was her mind.

It was fear. Fear of meeting Robin. Fear of dying and being banished to Hell and there, among the heat and flames and screams of pain, with the sickening stench of sin and bereavement and torture suffocating the air, among the city of the damned, ruled by someone more evil than her own flesh and blood, meeting him. She saw Robin's horrifying, drug-wasted face among the flames, and as she did, she screamed.

Raven clawed at the air, lungs crushed by the raging winds, plummeting to the ground at a speed that took her breath away. Tears streamed from her eyes, but they curled away into the air and hovered beside her face, twinkling innocently in the moonlight. Her breath choked off and she struggled to harness her powers, fought to erase the mistake that was about to cost her her life.

The ground was so close that she could see the water beneath her, dancing in the moonlight, and she knew that falling into it at this speed would break her neck. A cold wave of hopelessness broke over her…freezing her lungs, stilling her limbs, stopping the flow of tears.

…_i don't want to die __i don't want to die __i don't want to die __i don't want to die..._

She closed her eyes in preparation for the rush of death to overcome her.

And then there were hands bruising her ribs, arms circling her torso like a band of steel wrapped around her body. Brilliant green light seared through her closed eyelids and Raven felt the scream clawing out of her throat again. The terrible rush downwards stopped, and she felt corded muscles strain. Her eyes flew open.

The water was mere inches from her toes. There were lean, bronzed arms circling her waist. There was long red hair tickling her chin. And when she looked up, shaking with a relief that was to huge to express in any words…Starfire was looking down at her, eyes glittering.

And Raven was alive.

**Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed this chapter, everyone! Honestly, I was really scared when I was writing this, even though I knew what was going to happen. Because this was one hell of a close call. And guess what? Only one more chapter to go! (maniacal grin)**

**Yay! :)**

**By the way...Out of all the random filler-inner characters and OC's I've ever made, I think Beth is my favorite. She's so cool. In a sort of teenage-nightmare-too-cool-to-give-a-crap sort of way. She smokes, she swears, she wears awesome clothes, she says "Oh my God" as one word...She rocks. In a very _Grease _sort of way. :) I don't know. She's just cool.**

**(end random spaz-out)**


	13. Remembrance

**OMGAH. This is it, guys. This is the last chapter. The final shebang. This is the end of **_**Story of a Girl.**_

**I'M SO HAPPY!! :D :D :D**

**I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who read this, because your reviews totally helped me along! Yes, I **_**am**_** corny, but it's just because I'm so happy that, as of chapter 12, I got 70 whole reviews. That's amazing. I was thinking I would get, like, ten. Thank you **_**so **_**much.**

**On a side note, don't you think it's kind of ironic that this fic has 13 chapters? I honestly didn't plan it like that, but 13 is like the witching number. The evil, black magic number. Kinda cool, huh?**

**Oh, and on another note, the last scene took me six hours to write. I re-did it eight times. I counted. Crazy. I've never wasted that much time on a scene in my life.**

**ANYWAY. I should totally let you get to the freaking chapter now!! I just had to milk this for all it was worth, because in case you didn't notice (note sarcasm) I HAVE OFFICIALLY FINISHED MY FIRST FANFICTION. BECAUSE THIS IS **_**THE LAST CHAPTER!! **_**:D :D :D**

**Wow I'm a freak.**

**Enjoy!! :) **

The night was still dark. The Tower was still cold. And the bitter pain of Keith's sudden disappearance cut close to Raven's heart.

But as she sat cross-legged on Starfire's bed, wrapped in the alien's blanket and yet still shivering a little, she didn't feel quite as empty as she had. Like poison drawn out of a wound, her hopelessness drained away and left only exhaustion in its place. She was too tired to feel anything but shock at the fact that Starfire had saved her.

The girl was sitting on the bed as well, but they were careful around each other: they sat stiffly apart, backs ramrod straight, and facing different directions. An electric tingle danced between them, spiking Raven's nerves. She looked out of the corner of her eye to see if Starfire felt anything too, but the alien's profile was carefully blank. Despite the shattering moment they had experienced together, Raven thought there was more distance separating them both than before, and a little shiver of sadness skimmed down her spine.

Minutes ticked by. The silence seemed to grow—it breathed, it lived, it swelled more and more as seconds slipped past. Raven felt it pressing down at her and she wanted to scream.

Then suddenly, Starfire's voice broke through the silence, and her quiet words shattered the stillness even more than Raven's scream would have.

"How did you fall?"

A startled laugh somehow bubbled up from her throat, and when Raven let it out it sounded like ice breaking over cold water. "Fall?" Starfire's eyes were glittering under the bright lights. _Surely she knows what happened, _Raven thought. _Surely she knows._ A thought came uneasily to her mind. _Would she have saved me if she knew I wanted to die? Would she have saved me if she knew it wasn't an accident? _She pushed the idea away, but it left a sour taste in her mouth.

Raven squeezed a fistful of the pink blanket, but her voice still cracked when she spoke. "I didn't fall, Starfire. I jumped." Starfire pressed both hands to her mouth. Black energy sparked at Raven's fingertips and Starfire jumped a little before her lackluster eyes widened. She reached out to take Raven's hand comfortingly, but it was as if there was an invisible barrier in front of around them both: Starfire's hand trembled above hers for a few seconds, and then she withdrew it.

It suddenly struck Raven how drained she looked. So pale. So tired. Her green eyes were faded and the violet circles underneath them formed one big bruise. Raven was struck by the same urge to comfort Starfire, just like the alien had wanted to comfort her, but the lights sputtered in warning. She bit her lip instead.

When Starfire withdrew her hands a moment later, her eyes were hooded. "I don't understand," she whispered, and Raven felt like her heart was breaking all over again.

"Starfire, I…I didn't…" She felt her voice catching, and for one crazy moment she was sure that she felt Robin's finger caressing her cheek with a feather-light touch. But then the moment passed and she had to fight to get the words out. "I didn't want to live anymore," she whispered, and then her fingers leapt to cover her mouth as if she could shove the words back in like they had never existed.

The damage was done. Starfire's eyes flashed with disbelief. Raven drew her knees up to her chest, suddenly wondering if the alien understood. Was there sadness on Tamaran? Was there any sort of misery? Starfire had always seemed so happy…it was difficult to believe she had ever suffered _anything._ "It's okay if you don't understand," Raven managed to say, because that seemed important. "I was—I was just—I don't even—"

"I understand, Raven," Starfire said, and Raven stopped. Maybe it was her voice or maybe it was her words or maybe it was just the way the alien's eyes turned dark with misery…Maybe it was because Starfire had answered more than she wanted to know.

The room wobbled a little. "That's impossible," Raven blurted. "You're—you're—you're happy! You're always happy!" As Starfire's eyebrows slanted down, Raven tried to backpedal furiously. "I…I mean…You _were _happy. All the time. Which was a good thing. And—"

A razor edge slid into Starfire's voice and she stood up, trembling with fury. "Happy? I am _not_ happy. I am not smiling. I am not laughing. And I am _certainly_—not—happy!" Her voice slid louder and louder and green light flashed from her eyes. Raven jumped backwards as smoke curled into the air from the pink blanket, and she instinctively formed an icy black shield around her. Starfire's hands clenched. "Do not make the mistake of thinking you were alone in caring for Robin," she hissed, face alight with anger.

Raven felt a prickling behind her eyes, and she turned her head, ashamed. Immediately, Starfire's arched posture relaxed and her face softened. She sat down on the bed again. Raven burrowed her head into Starfire's shoulder. All of the pain and the sadness and loneliness poured out in the shape of tears she had never wanted to shed, because they carried every emotion she had ever known, every emotion that had never wanted to be seen. Starfire hesitated for a second, then put her arms around Raven's shoulders and stroked her hair soothingly.

"I am sorry," she said. Even though Starfire's voice was quiet, it was all Raven could hear: the creaking and sighing and rustling of the Tower was silenced in the wake of her words. "It is just…" She stopped for a second. "On my planet, emotion is unbridled. When we cry, we cry until every tear has fallen and we are left dry and empty. When we scream, we scream until our voices are no more and every breath pains us. When we love…" she stopped again, eyes clouding over with anguish. "When we love, it is with all of our hearts. And so I am sorry that I have been distant. I am sorry that I have been cold." Her voice shook as it continued, and by the end of her sentence it was nothing more than a whisper. "I am sorry I could not stand to look upon you. And I am sorry I have not asked for your forgiveness."

Another crazy, humorless laugh tried to force its way out of Raven's mouth, but she bit it back. "You're sorry? What do you have to be sorry for? I'm the one who did all of this. I'm the one to blame." She drew back from Starfire's embrace, and another tear curved down her cheek, bearing sorrow and guilt and blame. "I'm the one who should be asking for forgiveness."

Starfire sighed, and the sound was like wind whistling over an empty field. "Perhaps we are both to blame for withholding forgiveness," she said, and the misery was clear in her voice. They were both quiet then, but it wasn't oppressing like before. It was a sorrowful silence, and they were both alone in their grief.

Seconds turned into minutes and minutes stretched on and on. Finally Raven stirred a little, a single thought on her mind. "Starfire?" she asked tentatively, and the girl turned her tired eyes to her. Raven swallowed as the words turned to dust in her mouth. But they had to be said. They had to be spoken.

"I just wanted to say…I'm sorry too. I'm sorry for cheating with Robin. I'm sorry for lying. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you and I'm sorry that the team suffered for it and…and I'm sorry he's dead. And it's my fault. You were never to blame, Starfire. It wasn't you. It was me. All me." The traitorous tears were slipping down her cheeks again, but Starfire wiped them away for her.

"It was never you, Raven. Nor was it me. It was him. Whatever he wanted to do, he did. And we had no control over that."

The statement rendered Raven speechless. She had never thought about that way: it had always been her fault, her mistake. And as she saw Robin in this new light, her tears stopped and her breath came easily and suddenly she didn't have to fight to control her powers.

She felt…_free_.

The barriers had fallen, and there was nothing left between them. Raven surprised herself by leaning over to Starfire—and they embraced. When they drew back, a fragile smile was curving Starfire's lips, and the alien looked at Raven as if she were weighing a decision before speaking. "On my planet, it is traditional to partake in a sharing of memories to honor a fallen warrior. Perhaps we might participate in this ceremony."

Raven dragged the heels of her palms across her eyes. "You mean…we should remember Robin?" She felt a little flutter of panic cut through the shaky warmth she felt. "I…I don't know if I want to." Raven was tired of feeling this ache inside of her. She wanted to ignore it. How could she ignore it if they were both remembering it?

Starfire's eyes glimmered thoughtfully. "When the remembering is done, the forgetting can begin, friend," she said. The simple words made Raven blink.

And then she decided to do it.

"Okay."

Starfire looked incredulous. "Truly?" she asked. "If you do not wish to partake…"

Raven nodded firmly. "I do," she said. "I do wish to partake. Let's get started."

--

And somehow, it helped.

Starfire turned the heat back on, much to the relief of the Jump City electricians. She and Raven were on speaking terms again, and Starfire seemed to attempt to make small talk out of anything—anything to fill the emptiness of the Tower. Beast Boy gradually came out of his shell. Cyborg came up from his workshop. They ordered pizza. They watched movies. They fought crime and didn't get their sorry asses kicked.

Raven wasn't going to fool herself. Things weren't perfect. The peace was fragile. The happiness was delicate. They were all tired, and they all needed another leader.

But one day she took Starfire's advice. _When the remembering is done, the forgetting can begin._

Maybe Raven wanted to forget.

Maybe she didn't.

But one rainy afternoon she took a break from the Tower, and visited Robin. Because maybe she just needed to straighten things out a bit.

--

Raven stepped onto the wet grass and looked at the endless rows of headstones, the blank lines of tombstones that could tell more stories than any of her spellbooks held. But her feet guided her to the grave she had seen in the black and white newspaper picture, the one Starfire thought she had hidden so cleverly, the one decorated with wilting flowers and garishly bright, wet ribbons. The smooth, gleaming granite was the exact shade of his hair. Raven knelt down and traced the shape of his name, carved into the headstone in precise block letters. The name slipped from her lips as easily as a breath, but it carried such weight and emotion that it felt as heavy as stone. "Robin…"

He was the first boy she had ever loved, and she had thought he was the last. She thought he had scarred her beyond recognition. But as she looked back at the endless hours of the guilt, the shame, the abuse, the stolen kisses, and every emotion he had forced upon her…Raven knew he had created her. His abuse made her strong and his lies made her smart. The picture in the newspaper had a tiny article under it, barely an inch long. The news reporters had taken his side—he was the victim, she was the one to blame. She knew better. He could hide behind lies all he wanted and it would never make her feel any differently.

Raven knelt by his tombstone. She thought about what Starfire had said: _Whatever he wanted to do, he did. And we had no control over that. _And a new knowledge came to her slowly, falling into place as softly as a leaf dropping from a tree.

Life was not static. Life was not written in stone. Things could change, and they _would_ change. She couldn't live in the past, because as long as her arms were trapped in Robin's lingering embrace…they could never be free to welcome the future. _I want to welcome the future,_ she thought. _I want to be free._

Raven pressed her lips to the gravestone. The cold granite lent its bitter touch to her mouth and it stayed there, like the ghost of a kiss. The sky opened up and great, fat droplets of water rained down upon her head, beating a tattoo into her skin. Thunder shook her bones and lightning cleaved open the sky. She stood up and slowly, slowly walked away. And she didn't look back.

Raven didn't think about the love and hatred she had felt or the time she had wasted. She didn't think about the thoughts that had once seemed so overpowering, or the longing for a stolen touch that had ruled her entire life. They faded into the distance like a letter left out in the heavy rain. Yes, there were dominoes in her world…they had started to fall because she kissed a boy, and they kept on falling because she kept on kissing. But she had set up the dominoes again. They could fall again, and she would be strong enough to put herself back together, because she had made herself and she answered to no one.

Yes, there were secrets in her world…They wove themselves around the life she lead and the stories she told. They spun themselves into thoughts and words and actions and destinies. But she wasn't caught in a web of lies anymore. She _was_ free. She had spoken the truth and let it crash down upon the world in a dizzying rush, and the bittersweet wonder of it had healed her.

Her thoughts drifted forward…to the room in the Tower that had once been so full of Robin, and now lay silent and empty except for the swirling motes of dust. But then she caught herself: she closed the door in her mind, and she let go of his lingering smile, the one that had still haunted her thoughts_._

_When the remembering is done, the forgetting can begin._

Did she want to forget?

Did she want to let go of everything that had happened? If she had a choice, would she go back, and erase everything in the past year? Would she really go back to the days where it felt like the entire world was against her, and yet she was too proud to ask her teammates for help?

_No,_ she thought, surprising herself. _I would not. _Some things were meant to be forgotten. But she would hold onto the good things, the things that had finally defined her as a whole.

So Raven thought of his gray eyes that were so full of stories, and his calm assuredness, and his dark hair, and the Spandex that was a legacy and to be worn with pride on his skinny little legs. Everything that had made him wonderful. She didn't think once of his wasted, drug-withered self, because that wasn't him and it never would have been. Instead she remembered his laughter and his jokes and the way he had always been such a good leader. And for the first time, she could think of him without pain or tears or sorrow.

As she passed the silent graves, row by row, story by story, the silence of the place calmed her. _I can make my own future,_ Raven realized. _I have friends who care about me, and they don't care what I've done._

The past didn't matter anymore. She was pulling herself free and reaching to the sun and the moon and the stars, reaching for everything that would come her, embracing it with every ounce of wonder in her body. Yes, the past hurt…yes, the future might hold anything and everything she had ever dreamed about…but wondering about it would get her nowhere.

The knowledge stilled Raven's thoughts and soothed her heart. _There is only today,_ she thought. _There is only this moment and this emotion and this very second in time. And that's all I'll ever need._

She was free from the guilt. She was free from the shame. And she was free from the sorrow.

For the first time in a year…she was _free_.

The rain beat down on her head and she felt all of the worries slip away, and the peace that had been missing from her life for a year twirled around her body. Raven let the thoughts whirl away into the sky. There were things to be done and thoughts to be had…but not now. All she wanted right now was to go back to the Tower—back to the broken bond between her friends that she was determined to fix—and let herself bask in the love that they showed her. They could have a video game marathon or play Stank Ball or maybe even eat lunch together.

Raven found a wide, wicked grin growing on her face as she thought about lunch. Maybe she would treat them to some good, home cooking.

Maybe she would make pancakes. Just this once.

**OMG I JUST FINISHED MY FIRST FANFICTION!!**

**:D :D :D**


	14. Epilogue and Q&A

Hey, pals and gals! I know you probably got all excited or confused or whatever when you saw that this was a new chapter, but…it's not.

Sorry.

I kind of decided to do a little overview-type thing. Like, answering questions some of you reviewers had, filling in some holes I left in the story, telling you about stuff I TOTALLY meant to put in but COMPLETELY forgot, ect. So basically this is one whole huge Author's Note. Not technically a chapter, and not technically a fan-fiction either, but I think it deserves a spot anyway. Because if I put it in my profile, no one would read it. And there's nowhere else to put it, is there?

Okay. So. Ahem. I shall begin by answering some questions.

--

**Chibi Carru asked: **Well actually, Chibi Carru asked several questions. :D

**#1: …****err im sortuve confused of whats happening right now, i mean it looks like Raven took a day job or something...and thats about all ive caught on...Does she still live with the titans? And what is their relationship now with each other?**

—Yes, Raven took a day job. She actually had a job as a waitress/table bus-er/cook at The Last Drop Café (I took that café name from some music video I saw on Youtube…so to whoever came up with it, my apologies). And no, she lived in a depressing apartment home in Jump City. She was completely isolated from the Titans after Robin's dramatic confession-type thing. So in the five-something months she spent away from the Tower, she had no communication with them.

--

**Foi asked:**

**#2: I WANT TO know what happened!! How did she leave the titans? unless i missed it...**

—You didn't miss anything; I deliberately left that part of the story out. I left it out partly because it was kind of cool to go from a super-dramatic scene in the Tower, to a foreign kind of environment somewhere where Raven was failing miserably at making coffee. But I also left it out because I have no freaking idea how she got from one place to the other. And I was too lazy to come up with something. So it was kind of a deleted scene.

--

**Paprika90 asked:**

**#3: question because i forgot: was it underthe assumption that she is with child and she never was? or is she really pregnant?**

—Shoot, did I forget to add something in there as well? Haha. (blush) No, Raven was never actually pregnant, because I am actually extremely afraid of pregnant people and would absolutely HATE to make Raven suffer through that…And it doesn't really fit in with the theme of the story.

I wanted just wanted Raven to be afraid of something like that, and also to realize that her little fling with Robin could have more lasting repercussions than she realized. Plus, she got to throw tea at Beast Boy. I have ALWAYS wanted someone to throw something at him. xD

--

**RavenRobinGirl asked:**

**#4: also does Rae's co-worker person thingy hav any real importance or is he just some random person u threw in 4 kicks?**

—Keith was originally supposed to have a really, _super_ minor role. All I wanted him to do was teach Raven how to properly make coffee. But as I started writing more of chapter 9, I kind of thought, "Wow! This guy is one hot tamale! I wonder what would happen if he and Raven hooked up?" And so the disastrous chapter 9 was born.

…And to all those people who seriously thought this was going to be a Raven/Keith fic…I kind of have to laugh here. Excuse me for a moment.

(extremely loud laughter is heard from somewhere off in Cyberspace)

Ahem. I'm back.

_Story of a Girl_ was never going to be a Keith/Raven fic, because I hate it when people put random OC's in their stories and make them go out with a main character. However, I needed some way to instigate some more confusing feelings for Raven, and also as a way to get her back to the Tower.

I originally planned for Robin to see Keith and Raven talking in the street and get all jealous, then have Robin kidnap Keith and lure Raven back to the Tower. But that was kind of stupid. And anyway, if Robin was all drugged up, how would he manage to kidnap Keith, who (although I never mentioned this) has muscles that are like ten feet high?

It was kind of fun to think about, though.

--

**Chibi Carru asked:**

**#5: what do you mean "when she had powers" does that mean she no longer has powers anymore?! There gone, banished, nada?! If yes, how the hell did that happen then!**

—Jeez, I forget to explain this too! :D Maybe I should have had a beta-reader after all…

I put a little part in—what was it, Chapter 5 or 6?—about Raven losing her powers, but I kind of forgot to add in everything else. So here it is.

After she had sex with Robin, Raven was so overcome with these horrible, confusing emotions that her powers kind of vanished for a while. That was part of the reason why she couldn't defend herself when Robin was "confessing", and also why she found it easier to fit in as a civilian during her café days.

But then—in chapter 8 or 9, I forget which—she had been working out at the gym for ages and got pretty buff, and she felt that if Robin ever tried to hurt her again, she was strong enough to defend herself. So when she looked in the mirror, she saw someone worthwhile—and some of the confusing emotions were gone, and she could use her powers again.

--

**Tennisgal456 asked:**

**#6: what drove robin to use drugs?**

—This was another one of those tricky things that I just skimmed over. I really don't know why I had Robin use ecstasy. I needed more drama and a reason for Raven to be horrified and whatnot. Because the crappier she felt in the story, the cooler it would be when she finally "let go".

Maybe he was feeling guilty about the whole cheating thing as well. I mean, he had to _live_ with Starfire. At least Raven got to go away for a while.

--

**SylverEyes said:**

**#7: …you made me go back to eighth grade science; nine feet per second per second. Twelve stories, about four and a half seconds to fall. Raven can sure think a lot, and fast, in a very short amount of time. XP**

—Twelve stories? That's it? I thought the Tower was, like, at least twenty stories! :O That's crazy!

Hmm. Maybe it was one of those life-flashing-before-your-eyes kind of things.

--

And now, I have some random information.

**My favorite scene:**

Probably the "confession" scene in Chapter 6. It was so dramatic and angst-filled and crazy that I just had to love writing it. Plus, since people always call Robin and Raven "the birds", I had always wanted someone to make a bad pun about Raven being a bird. That was why I put all the stuff with Robin saying "Trying to fly away from home, little bird?" and whatever. Corny. But kinda cool.

**My least favorite scene:**

I'd have to say the part where Raven was in the hospital. I despise that scene. It didn't really fit with the story, her nightmares were really weird, and it was just kind of stupid and insane. I wanted to have Cyborg and Beast Boy visit, but I couldn't get the dialogue natural enough. And I hate hospital scenes as a rule.

**My favorite chapter:**

I'd say Chapter 4 was my favorite, yeah. I don't know why. I think it was because I got the Starfire/Raven dialogue to sound good, and it was really fun to have Starfire being super-nice and caring while Raven felt guilty about it. Because that was kind of the essence of the story: if you're lying to people who care about you, every kind gesture they make is just going to make you feel worse. And if you keep lying, then it's going to eat away at you until you confess.

**My least favorite chapter:**

Mmm…a tie. Between Chapter 2 (which was short, melodramatic, and kind of pointless), and Chapter 3 (pointless as well). I dislike them both.

**My two favorite characters:**

Ahh, I love Leslie Albertan, Raven's boss. He was hilarious. I was going to make him gay, but that would have been awkward to fit into the story, and it wouldn't have done much to make you dislike him more, since most of you already disliked him.

I also adore Becky, the girl who told Raven that Keith moved away. She was so hip and cool. Even though she's the type of person I'd be a little scared of in real life (she smokes, swears, dresses amazingly, wears a lot of makeup and is capable of jumping _over_ counters in one incredibly smooth move), she was still awesome. I loved her way of speaking. Plus she was totally oblivious to anything that didn't really concern the latest gossip. She was a jerk. But a really, _really_ cool jerk.

**Time it took me to write a chapter:**

It usually took a couple of hours to actually _write_ the chapter. But I'd have to think about it for about a week or two. Here is where I thank my fabulously lovely friend Dallas (XxNightfirexX) for giving me SO MANY fabulous ideas, listening to me rant about issues I was having, and coming up with the solution for the whole _Keith-is-supposed-to-leave-but-where-the-heck-is-he-going-to?!_ problem. She's awesome. Go read her stuff.

**I swore a lot in the stories. Do I actually swear in real life?**

Well, yes and no. I only really swear when:

a) I want to express a strong emotion, or

b) I want to impress people and decide that acting all cool and aloof and tough is the way to do it.

It usually makes me look like an idiot. But I do it anyway.

--

Now that we've covered that, there are just a few more things I want to put in. See, when I was writing, I would always think of things to put in, but I usually forgot to put them in. Here are a few examples…

**In Chapter Four: **You know that scene where Raven throws up and Robin comforts her, but then his phone rings? And Raven has never seen the phone before? And when she asks him who he was talking to, he kind of answered too quickly? And then he said his bike was at the mechanic's and yet he somehow managed to ride away on it?

There was supposed to be a scene with Robin following. He was actually talking to some of his "clients" (AKA the people he supplied with drugs) on the phone, and was telling them that they would get their drugs soon. So when Raven asked him what he was doing, he just said he was talking to the mechanics. That was why he could drive away on his bike, even though he stupidly told Raven it was getting fixed.

**In Chapter Six: **Remember when Raven was talking to Beast Boy and he was all, "OMGAH YOU'RE LYK TTLY PREGGERS!!11! :D :D :D"? And she sort of randomly spazzed out and threw her precious herbal tea at him? He was kind of supposed to make it a joke, like be laughing when he said it, but I forgot. Oh well.

I'm sure there are absolutely stacks more of these, but I really can't remember any more.

--

So yeah, I just wanted to clear some of that stuff up. Hope you understand everything now! And thanks for reviewing, guys. It made my day(s). :)

**Oh, and before I forget: I now have a poll! Another one! It is the "Guess How Old Seraephina Is!" poll! I'll tell you the answer after a decent amount of people answer it.**

**That's it. Toodles, and happy fiction-ing! )**


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